The Cold War was at its height, when the Army commissioned me as a combat arms officer. It was my responsibility to protect my country from the Enemy (Communism at the time) that threatened our way of life. They sent me to West Germany, where as a part of an attack helicopter battalion, I stared down the forces of the Soviet Union and prepared for war. In that time I learned how to analyze and understand the enemy. I was there to witness the literal cracks in the edifice of Communism as the Berlin Wall fell. Did we defeat the enemy? As I analyze today’s battlefield I conclude not. We, in this country and around the world, are facing an evolution of that same enemy. We need a better understanding to survive its predation.
With my first duty assignment in Germany, I had an opportunity to learn about Soviet Communism a little more directly and got to look through the lens of a people and a nation that were less than a generation away from the destruction of NAZI totalitarianism. I came to see that both forms of "governance" had fundamentally the same guiding principle: centralized control and domination by experts. No country is exempt from the rule laid out by Lord Acton.
History suggests that the highly educated and cultured Germans chose their Chancellor that led them to NAZI ism. The people of Soviet Russia, on the other hand, their course to Communism seemed a little more obscure: privation and revolution somehow devolved their systems. Different paths but the same end-state. Looking backwards we see dictators and thugs, but at the time those were the experts that promised solutions to the existential threats placed on the people. Funny to watch the parallel developments in today’s world. A different seeming series of events, but our experts use the same M.O. The people have been convinced that the horsemen of the apocalypse have begun their ride. And we have the leaders and medical authorities right there with us in our living rooms and on our various devices to reassure us that they are acting on our behalf.
As I analyze today’s enemy, I conclude that the paths taken and the labels placed on the end-state governments are unimportant. What does matter is that those top-down control structures lull the people into complacency before taking the velvet glove off of the iron fist. I suggest that the United States is about to experience what that fist feels like without the glove.
We were given a little breathing room in the last 6 months as attention was taken off of the SARS pandemic. The efforts to rev up the variants just never got the traction needed so they now have rolled out Monkeypox. As of this writing a new state of emergency has been declared. Will lockdowns follow? It’s much more obvious that this infectious disease is spread through physical contact so the logic of social distancing to flatten the curve would apply. Where is the Monkeypox track and trace app? Where are the orders to restrict public gatherings? Not even a peep from our public health experts suggesting such. What they offer is a vaccine, from the US Strategic National Stockpile. That particular vaccine is licensed but has ZERO clinical data to support its effectiveness. Oh and, by the way, this licensed Jynneos vaccine is already documented to cause multiple adverse effects- to include heart damage. A mandate is likely around the corner. If that isn’t enough to shift people back into pandemic panic there are the scattered stories of Ebola and Burkholderia outbreaks. Now there’s a really interesting one: look up the history of Burkholderia. The recent outbreak is in the United States yet that pathogen does not naturally exist in the US. Oh yeah, our medical experts brought that to Louisiana to do biowarfare research and, oops, let it escape the lab. So how to respond? A world health authority who will decide how and when we need to control people. Conquest, check. The first horseman is here to stay.
Where are the other horsemen?
Is it just a curious coincidence that governments around the world have simultaneously discovered the urgent need to restrict farming? Famine, check.
How about that ongoing Ukrainian conflict and the Speaker of the House playing chicken with China? War, check.
We are facing the ongoing reports of emerging diseases for which we have no seeming ability to defend against. Death is on the horizon, check.
We are facing an apocalypse manufactured by the experts who are trying to rule the world. They are telling us a story of ruin, but keep in mind what an apocalypse truly is. We are experiencing an unveiling, not ruin. So rather than the glove coming off the fist, I see the mask coming off the face. Once we can identify our enemy, we can effectively counter him.
We need experts, but as advisors and educators, not rulers. In the biblical analogy – judges instead of kings.
What now? If we continue down the path of relying on the federal government to airlift baby formula from Europe we are truly doomed. We need to become our own experts. You have to know how to feed yourself and problem solve and shelter and protect your family and community. Maslow helped us to understand a personal hierarchy of needs. The individual strives to achieve that, it isn’t provided by an authority. Learn from the other experts but don’t rely on them.
So, I’m a health expert. I offer you this advice to use as you face the current conquest.
First point: there is no pharmaceutical that cures. Some are necessary but most aren’t. All cause harm. Keep in mind that it needs a prescription because it is legally designated a dangerous drug. Over the counter is no better. The leading cause of liver failure is Acetaminophen. Improve your health to shorten your long prescription list.
Second: Sleep well – that is non-negotiable. Back to the first point, using pharmaceuticals to sleep is a no-go (more harm than good). Honor your circadian biology. Get out in the morning sun and start winding your day down as it sets.
Third: avoid putting crap in your body. Real food comes straight from animals and plants. The further away from those sources, the more likely that the thing you’re putting in your mouth is crap not food.
Forth: move. Don’t exercise – that term and concept is corrupted in our modern culture. Get outside and walk. Move like a human and have fun doing it.
Fifth: most importantly, connect with people around you – physically, emotionally. None of the other stuff matters if you sit at home in isolation. There has been a nefarious plot by those who manipulated all of us over the last few years. They have isolated and weakened us. I refer you to a New Testament verse, and it holds true universally: wherever two or more of you gather together, there I will be- Matthew 18:20. We are beings of community. The neat thing is that, when you integrate the first four things into your life, you strengthen yourself to better (and more safely) accomplish that most important thing.
Lastly: There are health practitioners of different schools of thought, training, expertise, and letters after their names. Hell, there are even M.D.s who are not caught up in pandemic panic. If you find yourself getting ill, and aren’t doing well in healing yourself, find one of those experts, who you trust, and see what treatments they have to offer.
Here's my parting thought… a life with zero risk is a life with no purpose. Be careful about negotiating away your humanity for an empty promise of safety.
Well said. I would love to see more community driven projects. Eg food farms and gardens, or clinics that run as cooperatives or even simply a return to a small business economy. The issue is getting away from this top down centralized hierarchy. These only historically fail. Empires collapse as entropy is inevitable. Eventually more energy and resources are required to maintain the systems than can be produced and so poof, they dissolve. Not once, not twice, not three times but always eventually it occurs. Perpetual energy continues to escape us.
Just like our bodies must balance everything, eg homeostasis. We too would likely better manage resources if we returned to smaller units, villages, tribes. Neo-tribalism.