One of your most insightful articles yet Mark. We sure enjoy hearing from you so thanks for staying with your side hustle...
Dr Michael Yeadon (former Pfizer VP) and others have posited that pandemics are simply not a real concern due to the self limiting nature of pathogens. More lethal means less spread and vice versa. The mortality rate of the Spanish Flu is likely to have been caused by massive overdoses of a new miracle drug called aspirin. Therefore it’s all a massive money and power grab.
The Bad Cat wrote about the aspirin deal. It was reprinted in Brownstone where it is easier to find. Absolutely worth a read...explains why so many young soldiers succumbed.
Heck, I'd go further than that, I'd say that microorganisms and germs - and pandemics - are our friends. They prune the species, a form of natural tough love which we really can't argue about (because it's natural). Those germs also train our immune system, without which we'd have no immune system.
Bill Gates at 2022 Munich Security Conference: “Sadly, the virus itself – particularly the variant called Omicron – is a type of vaccine. That is, it creates both B-cell and T-cell immunity, and it’s done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.”...
I understand that an odd virus could enter interaction and tend to mutate into something relatively harmless. I've heard it said that rolling out vaccination in the middle of an outbreak is just plain wrong because you don't want to vaccinate someone who has the virus. Vaccines are also known to spin off new virus mutations. Of course, there was no legitimate containment strategy for the virus. I think that was a big lie. It would take a number of years to make enough vaccine to attempt it (which doesn't work), and that would be with a well-immunizing vaccine.
Any dose. Aspirin is antipyretic, thus immunosuppressive. Of course, "over"doses are worse as they cause bleeding, wet lungs, etc. Aspirin taken during a viral infection makes you feel really good as you die. Western medicine seems overly fearful of fever.
Has the government, the agencies, etc,, always been this corrupt, but we never had the means to know until the past 30ish years? How much of what we bought in the past was also based on these corrupt, immoral, powerful, greedy, narcissistic a-holes?
I think doctors used to be good, but most are in that same boat. Pill-pushers who profit from keeping people sick. People are not human, they are cogs on a conveyor belt.
Doctors, like members of all professions, seem to have declined in their critical thinking skills. Everyone wants to follow a formula or "recipe" from the cookbook today. I shake my head daily when people in their 20s/30s can't work backwards using existing knowledge to solve novel problems or even solve old problems with slight nuances in terms of what they have previously encountered. These are our present and future doctors, lawyers, accountants. If you want to find the smart folks who can still solve problems, call a plumber, electrician, or mechanic.
These 20s/30s with absent human-specific creative capabilities & skills are on fast track to be replaced by advanced generative-LLM-powered machine-learning algorithms that are all the range today. I shake my head in solidarity with yours 😊
I have been heavily involved in the Covid situation since the beginning. The problem is not primarily "bad" doctors. The problem is not primarily "evil" health care workers. (Yes there are some of both.) The problem primarily is letting the government come between doctors and patients -- the thing they have most wanted to do for the past 50 years and for which Covid finally gave a (complete lie, but used) "good" mechanic to use.
As I tell every patient "You are your own science experiment". Medicine is about considering every visit as an N of 1. There is NO SUCH THING as Population Health (I walk out of the room when people start talking about that, or "big data".) If you know and do the right things for each individual patient, you will have done them for the population. If you "know" and "do the right things" for the population, you will have killed many individuals. (My very first publications were about how this was happening following protocols in cardiopulmonary bypass -- recognizing this completely changed how bypass was performed (still used today) and saved innumerable lives.) vonEye from Harvard published extensively on this topic many, many years ago.
The government HATES this narrative. Not surprisingly, this was best brought out in California (as usual) where AB2098 (passed by both houses and signed by Newsom) mandated that patients could ONLY BE TOLD WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SAID TO SAY -- irrespective of their actual health, individuality or needs or whether what the government told you to say was true or false. (Luckily, the law is currently on hold by the courts -- but this is the essence of everything bad about covid and medicine.) It has always irritated the lawyers who primarily make up the government apparatchik that they could not control health care. They do NOT care about YOUR health -- even if they "care" about the population. (Yes, many do not give a damn about that, either.)
You noted the decline in critical thinking skills. This is directly related to the deprecation of the quality of those allowed into and graduated from medical school. Fifteen years ago, the three primary screens for medical school admission were: 1) The mental ability to take on the more-than-difficult medical curriculum, measured primarily through rigorous evaluation of coursework, GPA and MCAT (the admissions test) scores; 2) The commitment to putting in the work (never a discussion of "work/life balance" in medical school -- to be a doctor, your work is your life, for all the good and bad that engenders); and 3) The deep desire to make every patient's life better and to cure/diagnose/help as many as it was possible to help. We had refined this selection process over decades and it resulted in many good doctors.
The LCME (the accrediting organization for medical schools) decided that this was all wrong and that admissions should not reflect the above -- because...equity. Now the three admissions criteria are: 1) demographic score; 2) Social Justice Warrior/Wokeness score; and 3) "distance travelled" score. And a few bonus points for following some doctor around. I wish I were exaggerating, but I am not.
Of course, after promising that this would not change the quality of graduating physicians at all, the current classes (apologies to the excellent students who also still manage to sneak in) have all had to be watered down to the lowest level. All the courses that were once carefully graded so one could separate the better doctors from those less good are now pass/fail -- easy to reset the pass point when you never tell anyone the actual scores. Even the National Boards, which were once a real comparative test, are now pass/fail. If this does not make you scared as a patient, it should. It is why most of us will not see any doctor under 45. (Not that there aren't good ones under 45 -- you just have no way to ever find out.)
This entire cohort of MDs is (as a class) less able to think per-patient and naturally gravitates to "cookbook medicine". When I was in school, cookbook medicine was considered the worst thing you could do -- it requires you to ignore the patient in front of you. Today's environment promotes it both financially (give the patient remdesivir, get $30,000!) and socially (everyone else has blocked all visitors and made everyone wear demonstrably useless masks -- let's do that, too!).
I do not know many doctors who were looking forward to killing anyone. But I know far too many who took the diktats of the non-knowing bureaucrats and "professional" societies and, without the ability or desire to think things through, decided for seemingly good, but actually bad ($, social pressure, AAP said so, whatever) reasons to do the wrong thing for the patient in front of them now.
Evil or stupid? Some of both -- but the real blame is much higher up the ladder. If we are to fix this, it needs to be fixed at the top of the broken process so that competent practitioners can actually be trained and can go back to taking care of each patient as they need it.
I recently wrote a paper on this question of historical corruption. In history, state crimes against the people (or democracy; SCADs) appear to have been the case. I call this an "awareness gap" which accompanies development into a society that requires someone to honestly dedicate themself to watching the state of the shared structure. The gap is what makes corruption in leadership and government possible.
There was railing against corps in the early 1900s, and even anti-vaxxers prevailed back then, in a fight. There was the uprising against corruption in the birth of the US, and so many other countries. There is the lack of ancient empires today. It appears they all fell.
In my writing, I characterized the modern age, starting at about 1900, as a time of a great manifestation, in population, stuff, and the size of societies and governments, and technology in the stuff, and an exploding knowledgebase. Sitting on top of so much of this is corporate, and the modern world, I think, is unique in its overall mass. I see a large, wayward mass, misguided across major industries and sectors.
The best that can come of this is an awakening and a healthy skepticism of Pharma interventions. I now question so many of them and am more determined then ever to avoid them, especially vaccines (all of them!). The childhood schedule is an abomination.
In Africa a mosquito net is far more useful at saving lives than a toxic COVID jab. But for that matter, so would the funding of infrastructure projects ensuring clean drinking water and electricity rather than the financing of terrorist operations resulting in mayhem.
The similarity between the "public health industrial complex" and the "military industrial complex" is striking.
For example, Fairfax County, Va. which includes the independent cities of Fairfax City and Falls Church, remains one of the richest counties in the U.S. This is because it is jam-packed with private military contractors involved in the "arms and spy industry."
What I think is important, is noting the "real" connection between pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and the DOD. Chemicals are considered a tool in the DOD arsenal. They're used in warfare against specific countries and were deployed against Western civilian poulations by declaring a pandemic, thus mandating an experimental mRNA toxin along with all the ancillary repressive protocols, ie., lockdowns which the Ghouls knew would cause millions of fatalities as well as middle-class financial ruin for innumerable small businesses. Similar economic sanctions relating to the Ukraine mess, are currently devastating the European middle-class while the wealthy go unscathed.
It's my opinion, the "transnationalist" ruling elite are planning to use public health organizations like the WHO as a way to control billions via "biosecurity worldwide governance" under the pretext of the cool new politically correct term "multipolarism." Regional technocratic governance by Russia, China, and the USA via biosecurity digital ID'S including health records and personal financial accounts are part of the plan. This will become more evident as central bank digital currencies are introduced and adopted worldwide. A series of dubious mRNA concoctions will be capriciously rolled-out based on the political agenda "du jour" and billions will be coerced to comply. Sort of like, it's your money or your life. However, they might be tempted to take both. It'll be a Brave New World; maybe...
The transnationalists appear to be trying to cut more deeply into 1st amendment rights as well, with recent "restrict act" legislation, proposing that executive agencies reserve the power to restrict anything they call harmful to the govt. As it is, I find it has become increasingly difficult to share comments or references on major platforms.
I have been reading the stats on MSM and alt news consumers, and the alt audience is getting big. I think the next thing it needs is organization, for common cause. I write a proposition for a democratic NGO for this, and I will link the intro. Currently, I am just thinking through a format for developing a starting trusted network, which I'll be posting soon. Cheers.
We can never let these totalitarian clowns "declare victory." Every time one of these stuffed shirt hollow titles says "it worked," we must vehemently slap them back and disagree loudly. If we let these horrible fascists who ruined lives smugly insist there was ANY reason for their madness - never mind a "good" reason - we will be betraying the interests of our children. The unending evil of their bullying crap is both self-evident and ignored by massive numbers of people.
We can NEVER let them claim any of this crap was needed or beneficial.
There was a time - this is for our younger readers - when the American Press actually took delight in skewering the lies emanating from the government. No longer!
Journalism schools - which arguably need not exist in the first place - used to focus on the Who, What, Where and When and ONLY IF OBJECTIVELY POSSIBLE they might opine on the Why of a story.
Now the vast majority of the mainstream media start with WHY and mold or ignore every fact possible to reinforce their preexisting storylines.
They sit with the Bullseye's perched, in sublime peace, atop their mansions, looking down upon the plebs scrabbling over arrows.
It is very dangerous times when the press considers their access to the mansions is for YOUR good - so that they can prevent our feeble minds from being confused with our own eyes and ears.
It is the worst of times when the press, to a large extent, dictate what is the appropriate dogma for the ruling class/institutions.
That's a first in history. We are looking into the bottomless abyss.
I briefly worked in the tallest building in downtown Montgomery, Alabama - 23 stories! About 11 of those floors were occupied by the Alabama Department of Public Health. You knew who worked where because they all wore name badges. Those people were everywhere. I don't know what they did. All that agency did back then was encourage more people to get their unsafe and ineffective flu shots. "Public health" is not good in Alabama. And that army of bureaucrats aren't improving it. But the agency pays a ton of tax payer money in rent.
💬 Young people lost irreplaceable experiences and social development opportunities. Stealing this time was far more criminal than is stealing wallets. 🔥
Wish there were a way to drum this into many a dewy-eyed skull, be they ignorant wilfully or blissfully.
I think a lot of Boomer libs would not care, even if they realized this. They were totally fine sacrificing the young so they could be "safe." Same thing with Social Security. Not a care in the world about financially burdening younger generations by taking vastly more in benefits than they will have paid in or acknowledging that "their money" has already been pissed away.
"Every bureaucracy wants to perpetuate its existence. If an administrative entity’s raison d’etre is to identify threats and respond to them, the entity will identify or concoct threats. "
100%.
that's exactly what happened with that soon-to-be-retired cop. but he didn't come up with that hustle. guarantee you that the police union orchestrated that scheme. problems like this will persist until we get rid of those bureaucracies.
indeed. as was foreseen by De Tocqueville (1805-1859), who wrote that the individual equality '.....necessary for distant administrative institutions to govern threatened individual liberty, which therefore could only be ensured by vibrant civic associations opposed to the state. To be preserved in this age of mounting equality, the story thus concludes, liberty required a relentless critique of administrative power....' - https://tocqueville21.com/le-club/tocqueville-theorist-of-the-state/
I couldn't agree more. These bureaucracies are a cancer in all developed countries. Funded entirely by easy access to their hosts blood (taxpayer funds), they metastisize out of control, and surely to eventually kill their host. It's a no win situation for either side unless we excise them soon.
Mark: Outstanding summary of our public health action during this scaredemic. I think you were hitting them with measured, unassailable facts---a velvet hammer, if you will. Your approach may even resonate with fence-sitters as well, which is really important. Since my intent here is to merely reach you, my audience of one, I will use a chainsaw as my tool: I think of Nazi Germany. I think of the mass acceptance and denial by “good German citizens.” You know as well as I: without them, that whole disaster would have never taken root. It all started when they abandoned their principles, little by little.
Teachers (unionized) in my area (northern Illinois) do the same as that cop for the same reason. Their method is to go on strike to force pay increases. Their pension is also based on their most recent salary. At one school, a 1st grade teacher had a higher salary than the principal. I'm certain this was not an isolated situation.
The greatest gift my parents gave me was a healthy skepticism of authority and particularly of the types who recommend things “for your own good”, like public health officials. It has stood me in good stead, especially over the past three years.
I wish and hope that if/when there is another virus they want to use to terrify the public that people will refuse to be drawn into the desired panic states and refuse to cooperate, but there are still plenty of dupes out there, ready to run to their hidey
holes like scared rabbits at the first sign of a respiratory virus.
One of your most insightful articles yet Mark. We sure enjoy hearing from you so thanks for staying with your side hustle...
Dr Michael Yeadon (former Pfizer VP) and others have posited that pandemics are simply not a real concern due to the self limiting nature of pathogens. More lethal means less spread and vice versa. The mortality rate of the Spanish Flu is likely to have been caused by massive overdoses of a new miracle drug called aspirin. Therefore it’s all a massive money and power grab.
Thanks, Howard
Thats’s an interesting fact about the Spanish flu.
Gato Malo wrote about that about a month ago.
The Bad Cat wrote about the aspirin deal. It was reprinted in Brownstone where it is easier to find. Absolutely worth a read...explains why so many young soldiers succumbed.
Heck, I'd go further than that, I'd say that microorganisms and germs - and pandemics - are our friends. They prune the species, a form of natural tough love which we really can't argue about (because it's natural). Those germs also train our immune system, without which we'd have no immune system.
I've written about that. See the "Gym class showers" story in the archive.
Bill Gates at 2022 Munich Security Conference: “Sadly, the virus itself – particularly the variant called Omicron – is a type of vaccine. That is, it creates both B-cell and T-cell immunity, and it’s done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.”...
Yeah. “Sadly”
That guy is a menace to humanity without equal.
I understand that an odd virus could enter interaction and tend to mutate into something relatively harmless. I've heard it said that rolling out vaccination in the middle of an outbreak is just plain wrong because you don't want to vaccinate someone who has the virus. Vaccines are also known to spin off new virus mutations. Of course, there was no legitimate containment strategy for the virus. I think that was a big lie. It would take a number of years to make enough vaccine to attempt it (which doesn't work), and that would be with a well-immunizing vaccine.
Any dose. Aspirin is antipyretic, thus immunosuppressive. Of course, "over"doses are worse as they cause bleeding, wet lungs, etc. Aspirin taken during a viral infection makes you feel really good as you die. Western medicine seems overly fearful of fever.
Thanks SaHiB. Good to know.
Has the government, the agencies, etc,, always been this corrupt, but we never had the means to know until the past 30ish years? How much of what we bought in the past was also based on these corrupt, immoral, powerful, greedy, narcissistic a-holes?
I think doctors used to be good, but most are in that same boat. Pill-pushers who profit from keeping people sick. People are not human, they are cogs on a conveyor belt.
Doctors, like members of all professions, seem to have declined in their critical thinking skills. Everyone wants to follow a formula or "recipe" from the cookbook today. I shake my head daily when people in their 20s/30s can't work backwards using existing knowledge to solve novel problems or even solve old problems with slight nuances in terms of what they have previously encountered. These are our present and future doctors, lawyers, accountants. If you want to find the smart folks who can still solve problems, call a plumber, electrician, or mechanic.
These 20s/30s with absent human-specific creative capabilities & skills are on fast track to be replaced by advanced generative-LLM-powered machine-learning algorithms that are all the range today. I shake my head in solidarity with yours 😊
I have been heavily involved in the Covid situation since the beginning. The problem is not primarily "bad" doctors. The problem is not primarily "evil" health care workers. (Yes there are some of both.) The problem primarily is letting the government come between doctors and patients -- the thing they have most wanted to do for the past 50 years and for which Covid finally gave a (complete lie, but used) "good" mechanic to use.
As I tell every patient "You are your own science experiment". Medicine is about considering every visit as an N of 1. There is NO SUCH THING as Population Health (I walk out of the room when people start talking about that, or "big data".) If you know and do the right things for each individual patient, you will have done them for the population. If you "know" and "do the right things" for the population, you will have killed many individuals. (My very first publications were about how this was happening following protocols in cardiopulmonary bypass -- recognizing this completely changed how bypass was performed (still used today) and saved innumerable lives.) vonEye from Harvard published extensively on this topic many, many years ago.
The government HATES this narrative. Not surprisingly, this was best brought out in California (as usual) where AB2098 (passed by both houses and signed by Newsom) mandated that patients could ONLY BE TOLD WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SAID TO SAY -- irrespective of their actual health, individuality or needs or whether what the government told you to say was true or false. (Luckily, the law is currently on hold by the courts -- but this is the essence of everything bad about covid and medicine.) It has always irritated the lawyers who primarily make up the government apparatchik that they could not control health care. They do NOT care about YOUR health -- even if they "care" about the population. (Yes, many do not give a damn about that, either.)
You noted the decline in critical thinking skills. This is directly related to the deprecation of the quality of those allowed into and graduated from medical school. Fifteen years ago, the three primary screens for medical school admission were: 1) The mental ability to take on the more-than-difficult medical curriculum, measured primarily through rigorous evaluation of coursework, GPA and MCAT (the admissions test) scores; 2) The commitment to putting in the work (never a discussion of "work/life balance" in medical school -- to be a doctor, your work is your life, for all the good and bad that engenders); and 3) The deep desire to make every patient's life better and to cure/diagnose/help as many as it was possible to help. We had refined this selection process over decades and it resulted in many good doctors.
The LCME (the accrediting organization for medical schools) decided that this was all wrong and that admissions should not reflect the above -- because...equity. Now the three admissions criteria are: 1) demographic score; 2) Social Justice Warrior/Wokeness score; and 3) "distance travelled" score. And a few bonus points for following some doctor around. I wish I were exaggerating, but I am not.
Of course, after promising that this would not change the quality of graduating physicians at all, the current classes (apologies to the excellent students who also still manage to sneak in) have all had to be watered down to the lowest level. All the courses that were once carefully graded so one could separate the better doctors from those less good are now pass/fail -- easy to reset the pass point when you never tell anyone the actual scores. Even the National Boards, which were once a real comparative test, are now pass/fail. If this does not make you scared as a patient, it should. It is why most of us will not see any doctor under 45. (Not that there aren't good ones under 45 -- you just have no way to ever find out.)
This entire cohort of MDs is (as a class) less able to think per-patient and naturally gravitates to "cookbook medicine". When I was in school, cookbook medicine was considered the worst thing you could do -- it requires you to ignore the patient in front of you. Today's environment promotes it both financially (give the patient remdesivir, get $30,000!) and socially (everyone else has blocked all visitors and made everyone wear demonstrably useless masks -- let's do that, too!).
I do not know many doctors who were looking forward to killing anyone. But I know far too many who took the diktats of the non-knowing bureaucrats and "professional" societies and, without the ability or desire to think things through, decided for seemingly good, but actually bad ($, social pressure, AAP said so, whatever) reasons to do the wrong thing for the patient in front of them now.
Evil or stupid? Some of both -- but the real blame is much higher up the ladder. If we are to fix this, it needs to be fixed at the top of the broken process so that competent practitioners can actually be trained and can go back to taking care of each patient as they need it.
Dr. K! Great post and thank you for being a brave and empathetic doctor.
From ...."...how this was happening following protocols in cardiopulmonary...".
to the terminus; multilate children to affirm your love for them...
Di, I couldn’t agree more with your statement 🎯
Yup. No thinking required when a diagnosis is after a drug launch.
'Has the government, the agencies, etc,, always been this corrupt ... '
Is it possible to think other than yes, they have?
I recently wrote a paper on this question of historical corruption. In history, state crimes against the people (or democracy; SCADs) appear to have been the case. I call this an "awareness gap" which accompanies development into a society that requires someone to honestly dedicate themself to watching the state of the shared structure. The gap is what makes corruption in leadership and government possible.
There was railing against corps in the early 1900s, and even anti-vaxxers prevailed back then, in a fight. There was the uprising against corruption in the birth of the US, and so many other countries. There is the lack of ancient empires today. It appears they all fell.
In my writing, I characterized the modern age, starting at about 1900, as a time of a great manifestation, in population, stuff, and the size of societies and governments, and technology in the stuff, and an exploding knowledgebase. Sitting on top of so much of this is corporate, and the modern world, I think, is unique in its overall mass. I see a large, wayward mass, misguided across major industries and sectors.
More recently, I've been reading about the expansion of alt news reading and the reduction in MSM consumption. I find it interesting to consider alt news readers getting organized. I'll give you a link to an intro: https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/introduction-to-a-democratic-approach
did you say NASA? <cough> <cough>
The best that can come of this is an awakening and a healthy skepticism of Pharma interventions. I now question so many of them and am more determined then ever to avoid them, especially vaccines (all of them!). The childhood schedule is an abomination.
And that trading freedom for safety is the off-ramp to bondage.
In Africa a mosquito net is far more useful at saving lives than a toxic COVID jab. But for that matter, so would the funding of infrastructure projects ensuring clean drinking water and electricity rather than the financing of terrorist operations resulting in mayhem.
The similarity between the "public health industrial complex" and the "military industrial complex" is striking.
For example, Fairfax County, Va. which includes the independent cities of Fairfax City and Falls Church, remains one of the richest counties in the U.S. This is because it is jam-packed with private military contractors involved in the "arms and spy industry."
What I think is important, is noting the "real" connection between pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and the DOD. Chemicals are considered a tool in the DOD arsenal. They're used in warfare against specific countries and were deployed against Western civilian poulations by declaring a pandemic, thus mandating an experimental mRNA toxin along with all the ancillary repressive protocols, ie., lockdowns which the Ghouls knew would cause millions of fatalities as well as middle-class financial ruin for innumerable small businesses. Similar economic sanctions relating to the Ukraine mess, are currently devastating the European middle-class while the wealthy go unscathed.
It's my opinion, the "transnationalist" ruling elite are planning to use public health organizations like the WHO as a way to control billions via "biosecurity worldwide governance" under the pretext of the cool new politically correct term "multipolarism." Regional technocratic governance by Russia, China, and the USA via biosecurity digital ID'S including health records and personal financial accounts are part of the plan. This will become more evident as central bank digital currencies are introduced and adopted worldwide. A series of dubious mRNA concoctions will be capriciously rolled-out based on the political agenda "du jour" and billions will be coerced to comply. Sort of like, it's your money or your life. However, they might be tempted to take both. It'll be a Brave New World; maybe...
The transnationalists appear to be trying to cut more deeply into 1st amendment rights as well, with recent "restrict act" legislation, proposing that executive agencies reserve the power to restrict anything they call harmful to the govt. As it is, I find it has become increasingly difficult to share comments or references on major platforms.
I have been reading the stats on MSM and alt news consumers, and the alt audience is getting big. I think the next thing it needs is organization, for common cause. I write a proposition for a democratic NGO for this, and I will link the intro. Currently, I am just thinking through a format for developing a starting trusted network, which I'll be posting soon. Cheers.
https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/introduction-to-a-democratic-approach
go for it!
We can never let these totalitarian clowns "declare victory." Every time one of these stuffed shirt hollow titles says "it worked," we must vehemently slap them back and disagree loudly. If we let these horrible fascists who ruined lives smugly insist there was ANY reason for their madness - never mind a "good" reason - we will be betraying the interests of our children. The unending evil of their bullying crap is both self-evident and ignored by massive numbers of people.
We can NEVER let them claim any of this crap was needed or beneficial.
True!
Plus, I get in the face of anyone who says "But we couldn't have known."
But the media still lies and will continue to.
There was a time - this is for our younger readers - when the American Press actually took delight in skewering the lies emanating from the government. No longer!
Journalism schools - which arguably need not exist in the first place - used to focus on the Who, What, Where and When and ONLY IF OBJECTIVELY POSSIBLE they might opine on the Why of a story.
Now the vast majority of the mainstream media start with WHY and mold or ignore every fact possible to reinforce their preexisting storylines.
It's exhausting and disheartening all at once.
They sit with the Bullseye's perched, in sublime peace, atop their mansions, looking down upon the plebs scrabbling over arrows.
It is very dangerous times when the press considers their access to the mansions is for YOUR good - so that they can prevent our feeble minds from being confused with our own eyes and ears.
It is the worst of times when the press, to a large extent, dictate what is the appropriate dogma for the ruling class/institutions.
That's a first in history. We are looking into the bottomless abyss.
I briefly worked in the tallest building in downtown Montgomery, Alabama - 23 stories! About 11 of those floors were occupied by the Alabama Department of Public Health. You knew who worked where because they all wore name badges. Those people were everywhere. I don't know what they did. All that agency did back then was encourage more people to get their unsafe and ineffective flu shots. "Public health" is not good in Alabama. And that army of bureaucrats aren't improving it. But the agency pays a ton of tax payer money in rent.
Off topic, my latest piece concludes that the Good Guys will still win in the end .... for these reasons:
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/the-good-guys-will-win-in-the-end
Thank you for the link to your newsletter, Bill. Good read.
💬 Young people lost irreplaceable experiences and social development opportunities. Stealing this time was far more criminal than is stealing wallets. 🔥
Wish there were a way to drum this into many a dewy-eyed skull, be they ignorant wilfully or blissfully.
I think a lot of Boomer libs would not care, even if they realized this. They were totally fine sacrificing the young so they could be "safe." Same thing with Social Security. Not a care in the world about financially burdening younger generations by taking vastly more in benefits than they will have paid in or acknowledging that "their money" has already been pissed away.
Not all of us Boomers. Many of us saw through the scam early on. Many of us spoke out against it. But our voices were not heard.
I work with college students. Those who objected to the closures were a tiny minority.
Yep, it's those who support the cradle-to-grave model of Socialism who are the problem. Soooo easy to spend other people's money.
"Every bureaucracy wants to perpetuate its existence. If an administrative entity’s raison d’etre is to identify threats and respond to them, the entity will identify or concoct threats. "
100%.
that's exactly what happened with that soon-to-be-retired cop. but he didn't come up with that hustle. guarantee you that the police union orchestrated that scheme. problems like this will persist until we get rid of those bureaucracies.
indeed. as was foreseen by De Tocqueville (1805-1859), who wrote that the individual equality '.....necessary for distant administrative institutions to govern threatened individual liberty, which therefore could only be ensured by vibrant civic associations opposed to the state. To be preserved in this age of mounting equality, the story thus concludes, liberty required a relentless critique of administrative power....' - https://tocqueville21.com/le-club/tocqueville-theorist-of-the-state/
I couldn't agree more. These bureaucracies are a cancer in all developed countries. Funded entirely by easy access to their hosts blood (taxpayer funds), they metastisize out of control, and surely to eventually kill their host. It's a no win situation for either side unless we excise them soon.
Gates!
Anyone who thinks he is going to protect us from viruses hasn't been paying attention to history the last 3 dozen plus years.
Or the past 3 dozen centuries.
Well if you want to get specific.
LOL
Thanks for this thoughtful essay, Mark. We can never let these tinpot fascists seize control of every aspect of society. Never Again, indeed.
Love your writing. Thanks for this.
Thanks, K.
Thanks for this, Mark. “Less is more” indeed.
Thanks TB.
Less is more applies to so much.
Mark: Outstanding summary of our public health action during this scaredemic. I think you were hitting them with measured, unassailable facts---a velvet hammer, if you will. Your approach may even resonate with fence-sitters as well, which is really important. Since my intent here is to merely reach you, my audience of one, I will use a chainsaw as my tool: I think of Nazi Germany. I think of the mass acceptance and denial by “good German citizens.” You know as well as I: without them, that whole disaster would have never taken root. It all started when they abandoned their principles, little by little.
Teachers (unionized) in my area (northern Illinois) do the same as that cop for the same reason. Their method is to go on strike to force pay increases. Their pension is also based on their most recent salary. At one school, a 1st grade teacher had a higher salary than the principal. I'm certain this was not an isolated situation.
The greatest gift my parents gave me was a healthy skepticism of authority and particularly of the types who recommend things “for your own good”, like public health officials. It has stood me in good stead, especially over the past three years.
I wish and hope that if/when there is another virus they want to use to terrify the public that people will refuse to be drawn into the desired panic states and refuse to cooperate, but there are still plenty of dupes out there, ready to run to their hidey
holes like scared rabbits at the first sign of a respiratory virus.