ARNOLD ZIFFEL AND READER PLEDGES

If you’ve read enough of my posts, you know that, as a kid, I liked the TV show, Green Acres. This surrealistic sitcom portrayed a New York City attorney who moves to the country and becomes a dilettantish farmer. He’s surrounded by hicks, one of whom owns a pig named Arnold Ziffel. Arnold is like a son to his owner, Fred Ziffel, who can decipher Arnold’s grunts and tail movements.

I’ve worked on a farm with pigs. Though they enjoy drinking and wallowing in disgusting slop water, pigs are plainly, eerily smart. They look directly into your eyes as if they’re trying to psyche you out. Winston Churchill said, “A cat looks down at you. A dog looks up to you. But a pig looks at you as his equal.”

It really feels that way.

In one episode, Arnold displays the gift of weather prophecy. His forecasts enrich his poor family and make him famous. But in the next episode, Arnold goes out on a limb and predicts summer snow in Chicago. Everyone thinks Arnold has lost his meteorological mojo.

Then, sure enough, a July blizzard blows in.

Substack allows readers to support the work of writers by pledging to pay for content. To date, I haven't sought or accepted pledges; any pledge solicitations that may have appeared on my posts were put there by Substack.

Chiefly, I didn’t seek or accept pledges because my posts were messages in a bottle that I felt driven to write and send to deal with my anger and despair about a gullible citizenry conned by opportunistic politicians and the media into embracing social and economic destruction over a respiratory virus. I also declined pledges because I didn't know when, like Arnold, I'd lose my mojo and run out of ideas about which to write. I didn’t want to write just because I felt that I owed supporters a steady flow of material.

By now, I’ve written over 100 anti-Scamdemic posts. I’ve often thought that a given post might be my last. Yet somehow, each week, I’ve experienced, seen or heard something, and a new theme has struck me. So maybe it’s as likely to think this process/muse will continue as it is to think it will soon disappear. Hard to say. Though I promise never to test your memory by posting re-runs, as on TV.

Regardless, readers’ Comments have convinced me that the time I spent writing has been worth it. Above all, I wanted to let sane people know that someone besides them saw that this was a Scamdemic. Many readers have said that I had written what they were thinking. That was my goal. Letting me know that you also saw the Scam reciprocally lifted my mood. Thank you!

Recently, a group of readers have pledged dollar support. None was deterred by the prospect that I might run out of ideas. Each told me that they wanted to support me because my messages had boosted their spirits. One pledger made me LOL when she wrote, “I understand that past performance does not guarantee future results.”

Given their expression of this sentiment, I'm willing to accept pledges as long as I can keep coming up with new perspectives.

I lead a simple life, in a small house, with a budget car and a low-paying day job. I have a basketball, a football, sneakers, hockey skates, a guitar, a piano, an old laptop, and some good books. These keep me busy. Other than food, I don’t have anything that I’m itching to buy. But my message is much truer and more thoughtful than the content published by the mainstream outlets. And if propaganda purveyors are paid handsomely to mislead the public, I shouldn’t feel bad about being paid modestly to write the truth.

Importantly, Substack gets a percentage of reader pledges. In a nation where the media is badly biased, Substack deserves support for its willingness to publish without censorship. My message only reached people because Substack (and ZeroHedge, Citizen Free Press and The Brownstone Institute) provided platforms to me and other Coronamania dissenters. I began posting anti-Coronamania messages on Medium.com in March, 2020. When Medium deleted my account for telling the truth, I shifted to Substack. As Brownstone, Zero Hedge and CFP derive content from Substack, I would have reached almost no one without Substack.

No matter what happens, I’ll write what I think is true and worth saying, hopefully in a clear, interesting way. And I won’t hold back in order to avoid alienating anyone. I’ll know if I’ve run out of ideas. And readers will let me know by ceasing to support me.

I won’t put up a paywall. Above all, I think of all of you as friends of inestimable value during a dark time. I’ve very much enjoyed meeting some of you in-person or speaking on the phone. If the world still feels crazier than usual to you and you want to discuss it, we can set up a time to talk via forecheck32 at g mail. If you’re passing through Central NJ, I would very much like to share some time with you; please stop by. I’m always down to share a meal or throw some ball or other or pull down my guitar and sing some songs together. Or just sit on my front porch, drink cool beverages, lament and laugh.

We’re all in this together. Except that when I say “all,” I mean only those of us who have seen the Scam, will never forget it and will never let others forget it. We are tribesmen, kindred spirits and unvaxxed-blood brothers and sisters.