Monthly Archives: March 2020

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation

COPING WITH THREATS

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The freedom of the United States and the stability of worldwide political intercourse, depends on the role of the Dollar.
The greatest threat to dollar stability.

Prudence will be served best by a rational analysis of how and why the COVID-19 strain of “coronavirus” so dramatically upset governance, liberty and economics, compared to other flu-like illnesses that infect huge numbers of Americans every year.  This essay is beginning at the height – or the depth – of the national economic shutdowns and of the extraordinary fears that have everyone suspicious of every other warm, breathing human.  It wasn’t going to be published until we were at the other end of this national economic threat, which will, it seems Prudent to say, going to arrive.  But it cannot wait.  What can this new virus be compared to?

Annually, more than 30 MILLION U. S. residents make hospital visits due to the 4 common flu viruses.  And hospitals are busier because of them: there are some 200,000 hospitalizations.  This happens with no enforced shutdowns of business and trade, or restrictions on movement of legal residents.  If someone tells you they may have the “flu,” you back away, say “don’t give it to me,” smile and recommend your favorite home remedy: “Hot water with lemon.  Make sure it’s fresh lemon, squeeze it so you get all the juice.”  Then you carry on your daily activity, sure that you have cured someone.

Television advertising reminds everyone of the wonderful “flu” medications for sale that, in fact, suppress symptoms, enabling customers to feel good enough to go to work!  But, did you know that in the 2017 – 2018 “flu season” that there were 900,000 hospitalizations?  You didn’t hear about that then?  Weren’t the media keeping us up to the second with every new case, and in which county and city it appeared?  You weren’t afraid to leave the house?  Why not?  EIGHTY THOUSAND people died from flu that year, and in just a few months!  Ye Gods!  We should have been cowering, waiting for the federal government to rescue the entire country and we failed – we failed – to pay attention.  Thank God we survived that crisis.

The 2017 – 2018 season was 4 TIMES worse than the year before and our virtuous political leaders were asleep at the switch.  How was it that they didn’t whip us into a frenzy of prevention, segregation and economic dependency?

Is it Prudent to offer a couple of predictions?  One is that a relative handful of economic powers, some or all at least partially financial powers, will emerge with MORE economic power than they had prior to COVID-19.  Why does this seem likely?  Because those are they who know how to profit from crises, whether military or medical.

Want another?  The crisis we believe coronavirus has created, will be extended in many aspects, into the Fall, possibly through the beginning of November.  It’s possible that enough economic damage will have been done by mid-April for this to happen regardless of politics, but if not, political considerations will make it last for two valid reasons: 1) Democrats believe they can damage Trump into non-re-electability if things get “bad enough;”  2) Republicans believe that managing a terrible crisis with signs of steady improvement, will keep the nation from “changing horses in mid-stream.”  It would be more Prudent to put the whole thing to bed, so to speak, before the middle of April.  Let’s hope this prediction doesn’t pan out.

Based on the tawdry quibbling over how many non-virus-related hands will get greased by the, perhaps, $2 Trillion dollar rescue, bailout, support, small-business/ big-business load the Congress is “debating,” many socialist dreams could get realized thanks to the Chinese coronavirus.  Rational residents of our once-great nation should be shaking their heads at the crude nature of most of those august men and women, but we’re afraid to spread the virus ourselves.  Evidently, the House under Speaker Pelosi, has tried to include a dozen or more components of the leftist agenda in the “emergency” legislation.  One has to wonder.

Another prediction involves the health-care industry/system.  They are moving public policy at every level of government while struggling to meet the sudden pressures of a contagious disease.  It’s a disease that needs lots of products for just protection of care-givers – more than anyone had in stock.  It also requires lots of specialized equipment for treating those infected – more than anyone had in stock.  COVID-19 also requires lots of decisions about how to both remove the shortages of stuff, and to “prevent” the continued spread of infection – there is an oversupply of those: politician-provided.  And, unlike gloves, masks and ventilators, the proper operation of decisions is very difficult to measure or evaluate.

By definition decisions are made in advance.  Decisions made about the past are notoriously ineffective.  Real decisions lay courses of action, often without knowing which of the potential consequences will actually manifest.  There is always a hope that the one consequence a decision-maker prefers will be the one that happens, but once a decision is made, it’s a bit of a crap-shoot.  There are too many moving parts to control which consequence will be true tomorrow, or the next day, or a week or so from decision time.  In this current matter, the decision was to keep people from congregating, even down to groups as small as, well… two!  This has a corollary that says most businesses must close, especially those that operate with congregations of people – like restaurants, churches, schools, public transportation, planes and on… and on… and on.  It means no weddings or funerals, no court sessions, no legislative gatherings, no business meetings, book clubs or sales leads groups.  Very few business activities will be “allowed” to happen.  Meanwhile, millions of people are not paid, millions of transactions are unconsummated, billions of dollars of commerce are unrealized, and trillions of dollars of wealth are vaporized in a few days.

Was this damage a decision or an unfortunate consequence?  Who could possibly benefit from this consequence?  Some will, unfortunately.  As this shakes out – hopefully with the United States still an independent nation (this is relative) – the new economic patterns will emerge and we’ll see the beneficiaries.  China will have something to do with them.

Odd, it seems, that the paralysis of the West has coincided with the miraculous cessation of reported cases in China.  Clearly China has manipulated its stories about coronavirus, its reports about coronavirus, its claims about who started the virus’ infections (the U. S.), its denials of anything wrong having ever been done by China regarding coronavirus or regarding the punishment of doctors attempting to warn the government of China about its uncontrollable spread, and now, about the incredible end of new infections.  Is there any reason to believe that this disease was not released to have precisely the effect it has had on America and Europe?  Or, to believe that the West has reacted in the only ways most favorable to China?

Keep an open mind.  Question EVERYthing.

Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

THE BIG ENVELOPE

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North Carolina Senator Richard Burr coincidentally sold most of his stock portfolio after a closed hearing on COVID-19.

The big envelope arrived the other day, from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is not a committee that tries to solve problems for the Prudent and concerned citizenry, but a campaign committee that tries to solve problems for politicians.  And, while it certainly has that right, Prudence dictates that recipients are just as permitted to scoff at it and withhold requested funding… or send in the funding to the degree that the needs of politicians may, momentarily, coincide with one’s own.

The questions were off-putting.  Did the carefully chosen recipient think that the Democrats would work with President Trump to improve things for the American people?  The options were Yes, No, and Not Sure.  At the very end of the over-sized questionnaire the committee provided a space for “Comments.”  Except, they didn’t really want very many of those.  Prudence tried to compose two sentences that could impart the folly of the questions and the implied policies they hinted at, to no avail.  It could fill a whole blog post.

Unfortunately, in this recipient’s view, even President Trump, ostensible leader of the organization that spawned the aforementioned Committee, is barely trying – or able – to shift the course of Socialism that has infected our Constitutional system of individual liberty.  None of the questions even hinted at the underlying, fundamental corrosion of our potential and promise, so it didn’t seem Prudent to answer any of them.  Most Americans are inured to the essential Socialism we live with, even as it washes out our national foundations, nor do we recognize the socialist nature of hundreds of federal and state programs.  The Left has dragged the debate firmly onto its spongy, swampy, turf, yet we still appear befuddled in the few debates there actually are.  Where is all this socialism?

The federal and state budgets are replete with it.  “How can that be?” you ask.  “We don’t like socialism in this country!”  That’s what WE think.

Since 1946 the federal government has provided subsidized free and reduced-cost lunches to school-age children… millions of them.  Most recent statistics indicate that some 30 Million children receive breakfast AND lunch in public schools.  Here and there late-afternoon meals are also served.  Where are the parents?  Obviously so tied up with important tasks that they are unable to feed their own children. 

Obviously, no one can bear the thought of hungry children trying to learn on empty stomachs; we must feed them.  At the risk of sounding cruel, one is prompted to ask what the SNAP program is accomplishing if it fails to make sure that children receive nutrition from its benefits?  Are there no sanctions on parents who fail the test of the most basic parental responsibilities?  Feeding your own child?  Apparently not, and not needed.  The federal government has provided much of that function so that parents need not be bothered.  Everyone is happy.  Socialism:  identity linked to a certain group spurs unique attentions from a central governing body, frequently economic attentions – positive or negative.

What about the most basic socialist program: Social Security?  Begun as a simple, partial support for those too old to work, Social Security has become an ostensible retirement program as well as a source of “off-budget” revenues for our erstwhile budget-masters in the Congress.  Indeed, there they were: some dollars they couldn’t obtain cheaply enough on the open bond markets, and they didn’t actually steal  them.  They placed bona fide I. O. U.’s in the form of United States bonds in the imaginary “lock box” of which existence taxpayers were repeatedly assured.  In a way, the moneys collected on behalf of future retirees WERE stolen, another of the inevitable actions of socialists for whom ANY source of revenue may be justified for the good of all.

Social Security, long in surplus, was too sweet a piggy-bank when the “need” to provide for the mentally “disabled,” especially children, and for a host of others deemed disabled under the ADA, including alcoholics and other addicts.  Now, in answer to another prayer to who knows who, for more revenue for the common weal, we have THC emporiums springing up from coast to coast, often enriching former socialist office-holders, and which can allay the disabling anxiety of the developmentally coddled.  There will be less crime, now, and happier sheeple, ahhmmn… voters.  Gambling wasn’t expanding its contributions to the common good quite rapidly enough.  Prostitution is always waiting in the sheets, as it were, with added revenues needed for “education” and “infrastructure.”

Another clue to our socialist underpinnings is the $23 Trillion-dollar debt hanging over us, all.  The centuries-old result of socialism is running out of other people’s money.  Socialism is based on collectivist action, governing by group identity rather than having power derived from individual rights and actions… and responsibilities, the source of business-generated productive surplus and innovation.  Socialism is a system of diffusing responsibility, and once in that mindset it is a small step to borrow today’s comforts, ahh… crucial needs, from future taxpayers.  Politicians are especially comforted by the prospect of buying votes with the greatest “other people’s money” ever conceived: “borrowing” from 3 generations in the future.  Talk about diffusing responsibility.

Into this dishonest mess has dropped Covid-19, facilitating the wet dreams of socialists everywhere: “universal” health… ahh, well, not care, exactly, but universal RULES that are backed not by law but by police – best of all.  And these aren’t rules for hygiene; these rules are destroying the economy, individual businesses of every size, jobs, household economies, availability of goods, including food, paper goods and all the cleaning and disinfecting products that are needed to render every body antiseptically pristine.  All it costs are hundreds of billions of lost business and tax revenue, plus a few inalienable rights, like the entire Bill of Rights.  In one swell foop our governments have rendered virtually EVERYONE dependent on government, and otherwise rational and independent men and women are willing to argue angrily for following every new restriction on rights and commerce, out of fear.

Meanwhile, the largest bailout/stimulus/stock-buyback program in the world is being polished up by the 535 people on Capitol Hill who can benefit the most from it.  Don’t you sometimes wonder how Representatives and Senators become multi-millionaires while sacrificing for us in “public service?”  Insider trading is a good way.  Let’s hope that what they finally shove down Pennsylvania Avenue is actually the right prescription for our suddenly sick economy.  Could happen.

The third person in line of succession to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi, doing her level best to help Americans in this time of shared stress and fear, tried to slip a loophole into the emergency “stimulus” legislation that would have enabled federal funds to pay for abortions, which is currently illegal.  She has her priorities; most of the rest of the people in the United States have theirs.  One could look back to 1973 when a shadowy “law” was discovered in the fog and abortion became “constitutionally” protected, and wonder if the termination of 61,000,000 Americans was simply not enough to have prevented COVID-19.  Maybe speeding up and expanding the death of our future will have a net positive effect.

Fortunately, every college graduate over the past 40 years has NOT been a communications, marketing or art major, and the latest iteration of “coronavirus” will be solved and resolved by very smart and accomplished people.  The problems of the hog-tied economy will not be so readily set aright.  It was shaky prior to the flood of unprecedented federal and state dictates, becoming, both because of and in spite of the booming financial markets, more and more unbalanced.  The ultra-rich were becoming ultra RICHER; a smaller middle-class of small and medium businesses were doing better; the vast majority of small businesses were struggling against the globalization of contracts and ownerships that remove thousands of previously independent enterprises from the competitive, free-enterprise marketplace.  A large fraction of the population were simply watching the growth of the rest of the economy, while experiencing little of the new wealth.  This model is common as socialism matures in the societies that have suffered under it.  A small group becomes very much more comfortable – and powerful – than everyone else, the middle class is reduced to homogeneity, the helpless low-producers are eventually eliminated or relegated.

Right now we are required, under stronger and stronger sanctions, to place our trust in a pyramid of government strata, populated by smiling politicians who have made careers out of deceiving Americans.  Let’s hope this crisis has shocked them into utter veracity, now.  That could happen, too; we’ll ignore the deceptive insider trading.  It’s nothing new.

Culture, Economics, Family, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020

WOO, WOO, WUHAN

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We have enough to worry about... I'm not going to worry about toilet paper on top of everything else.

You may have heard of this new virus, COVID-19?  Many have.  It’s not as widespread as “the flu” or hemorrhoids, but it’s becoming a popular meme.  The Chinese provided the best possible environment for the rapid spread of “Coronavirus,” but they are quite reluctant to take full credit for their successes with this new flu virus.  Funny, that, for the progressive and benign inventors of virtually everything, starting with justice for all.

People and governments, businesses and schools and other institutions, have reacted in some ways foolishly.  Again, the Chinese were world leaders, although they have started to forcibly push that honor onto the United States, displaying their progressive generosity, to the point of claiming the highest honor of all: being the victims of COVID-19, rather than the originators.  How friendly is that?

There are numerous “corona” viruses, 7 at least.  Some of them haven’t “sold” as well due, possibly, from their not having been granted cool, mysterious names.  Right now, COVID-19 is hot, and everyone seems to want it… or, at least, wants to worry about it.  229E (alpha coronavirus), NL63 (alpha coronavirus), OC43 (beta coronavirus), and HKU1 (beta coronavirus), all gain customers every year but are never celebrated as much as SARS, MERS or the king, COVID-19.  I mean, who the Hell would want people to know he or she were suffering from “NL63?”  No one, that’s who.

“Coronavirus,” however, or COVID-19, clearly carries a certain élan, some people are so excited about it they are posting their symptoms and difficulties for all to envy and, perhaps, copy, if they’re lucky.

Admittedly, your correspondent, who has never caught SARS, MERS, 229E, NL63, OC43, or HKU1, and not even the 2009 Swine Flu, and whose ability to get within 6 feet of COVID-19 is equally in doubt, still shares your desire for victimhood and all the benefits that go with it.  President Trump and Congress have cooperated to pump air into our virus-deflating economy.  They call the air, “money,” so-called “billions” of dollars’ worth.  It, and many regulatory changes may prove valuable in the limiting of COVID-19’s popularity, so those of you who have gotten hold of some will be even more famous as the weeks and years go by.

Popular and social media, along with other “influencers,” have managed to whip up a pretty good frenzy over “coronavirus.”  In response, every business that typically attracts crowds of people to its products, from Wal-Mart to the NBA, major league baseball, the NHL and various marathons and fun-raisers, have cancelled or postponed their events, at great economic loss.  Individual star-players have stepped forward to financially support the hundreds of ancillary employees and businesses that function to operate sporting events and to serve their attendees.  Real generosity, as compared to the “federal” type.  A lot of the lost or displaced economic activity will never be restored or replaced.

Some businesses, naturally, will benefit mightily… paper-goods manufacturers, for example and any store or supermarket that sells them.  Bottled-water purveyors and those same stores, again.  Company’s that make hand sanitizer, antiseptic surface wipes and face-masks, among other goods, are doing nicely as sheeple attack their supplies to obtain extra quantities of those items that no one and no family, certainly, could bear to do without.

Toilet paper is a big item as the perceived threat of worldwide pestilence rears its empty head.  Dozens of rolls.  If the supply chain for toilet paper gets severed, people are calculating, their family is not going to suffer the absence of toilet paper until the very last possible minute.  This is perfectly logical, possibly even Prudent, although neither quality can be judged on real merits.  Faced with a frightening disease, the natural reaction is to stock up on toilet paper.  Clearly adherents of this philosophy have not thought things through: if conditions deteriorate to the complete cessation of toilet-paper production, there likely won’t be any food to eat, either, and wiping one’s butt will mean less and less in the grand scheme of things, until we are all smothered by the final, rapid descent of what’s left of the sky, bonking us all on our heads, rendering us senseless.  No shit?

Basically, coronavirus, COVID-19, is a new strain of an old friend, causing a variant of the seasonal flu.  AS WITH ALL “FLU” VIRUSES, elderly, especially elderly nursing-home residents are at the greatest risk, as are those with other respiratory diseases or weaknesses, smokers and those otherwise immune-compromised.  Without strong immune systems, infected victims will find it hard to conquer the virus, and in those, the virus will replicate at its fastest, causing fluid build-up in the lungs and death from pneumonia or, in effect, drowning.  No one wishes such an end on anyone.

The “flu,” we have observed, tends to decline in the spring and virtually disappear in the summer.  Why would that be so, if it’s so virulent?  Why are some people able to fend it off easily in its “high” season, mid to late winter?  Why are carefully-tended nursing home residents so susceptible?  It’s all dependent upon individuals.  It is our habits, our practices, our health and nutrition and our good sense that enables a virus like COVID-19 to succeed or fail.

Why do flu viruses infect more people in the winter?  In large part it is because humans tend to have more bronchial and rhinopharyngial inflammations in cold weather.  We cough, our sinuses produce more fluids and mucus, we blow our nose, and our bronchial tubes collect mucus and fluids.  We work hard to get rid of these intruders and enflame these sensitive linings.  Both bacteria and viruses find welcoming environments and it’s off to the races.  Over the period of a couple of weeks to a month our bodies fight off the infections and our immune systems are invigorated.  Fairly soon there are fewer and fewer people who are contagious and the season passes into spring and summer, and another factor kicks in: sunshine.

Vitamin D is essential in all sorts of organic functions, including strengthening our immune systems.  We are likely to be a little healthier in warm weather because we get more sunlight and our skin creates more vitamin D.  It’s not just that simple, but it’s not a lot more complicated, either.  Nursing-home residents don’t get as much sunshine, for one thing, rarely consume really good meals, don’t get to take supplements, and are kept away from viruses to a great extent, thus rarely exercising their immunities, leaving them more vulnerable than just age alone would make them.

With flu warnings hammering us every “flu season,” we also modify our habits, cover our coughs and sneezes more diligently, stay away from others when we’re feeling ill, take our vitamins more diligently, wash our hands more often, things like that.  And, we survive the flu, kind-of like the way we are surviving the new “coronavirus” this year, too.  There aren’t many MORE ways to have reacted badly to COVID-19 than the ones we have and are trying, starting with the Chinese in particular.  If we had simply described this virus as an especially aggressive flu bug and blasted the airwaves with how to protect ourselves and what to do if our symptoms are one way or another, we’d be acting extra carefully and still going about our daily and business activities.  There’d be more absenteeism, but no mania, the cost of which we can hardly estimate.

COVID-19s is a nasty bug.  It has a more severe effect on lungs than other coronaviruses, making breathing difficult and stressing hearts.  The death rate is higher, too, and, like other coronaviruses, mainly for senior citizens, rates spike with age and certain pre-existing conditions.  Number-one is heart disease.  Another big one is diabetes, which is its own epidemic in overweight America.  If your health is already under attack, please protect yourself.  For age groups over 60 the risks are higher.  Compared to other well-known flu’s – the ones that come back every winter – the death rates spike higher with this new one for these at-risk, older groups.  Use good sense: don’t snuggle with anyone exhibiting ANY flu symptoms.

In the United States, hyper-politicized and divided into sets of enemies, we have allowed the entry of the latest coronavirus to modify our governance and our economic relationships, citizens and federal government, and states and federal government.  It’s dangerous.

COVID-19 is a serious disease, mainly because it is more easily transferred than other flu’s.  It doesn’t mean we’re all doomed to catch it, nor that every senior citizen is going to die if he or she is infected.  The speed of its spread has tripped up health systems, but now that it is better understood, the natural anxiety caused by the rate of infection can be set aside and replaced with best practices to help people recover, AS MOST OF THE INFECTED ARE GOING TO DO.  Reactive mania, while politically irresistible, is not particularly helpful beyond the shortest of terms.  The concerns about testing rates have more to do with getting the infection statistics right than with specific treatments for those infected.  One of the reasons South Korea has relatively low infection and death rates is its widespread testing.  That data keeps panic at bay.  With cleaner air nationwide, and lower smoking rates than Asian nations, Americans are in some ways healthier and somewhat less at risk.

Americans have learned, on a sudden, how quickly their freedoms may be curtailed by a handful of press conferences and an executive declaration of a “state of emergency.”  Families can be disrupted with school closings and by “woke” corporations changing job descriptions without notice.  Whole businesses may be shut down by arbitrary event-attendee limitations, mostly by state authorities.  It seems unreal, yet the expansion of economic, social and religious displacements is evident with every hourly newscast.  It seems imPrudent.

Take your vitamins, extra C, as much as 3,000 IU’s of vitamin D, eat fresh fruits and veggies, and an orange every day.  It makes a lot more sense to stock up on oranges, lemons and limes than toilet paper.  Don’t smoke… anything.  Get plenty of sleep.  Don’t frequent venues where people are packed tightly together; stay away from others if you feel sick, have a tough cough or are sneezy.  Pray – praying for those who are sick is always recommended.  While you’re at it, ask God to protect our hapless United States of America.

Economics, Education, Governance, Representation, Taxation, Terrorism

TO CATCH A THIEF

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If only it were only our money being stolen…

Coronavirus, Covid-19, strain S or strain L – or both – is the unannounced candidate in the 2020 presidential race.  Democrats have already been calculating how to use the epidemic to make Trump look bad; they haven’t been calculating, much, as to how to protect citizens and residents from the disease, or to restore the pharmaceutical industry to the United States.  Hatred will do that: blind the carrier to its contagion, making him, or her, feverish and seeking a point of blame.  Trump will do.

Theft is very similar.  Where the blind virus can steal a person’s health, mobility, outlook and good nature, so can hatred, equally blind, make off with decorum, civility, kindness, compassion and good sense.  Both patients are… sick.

But theft, as any victim of a thief can testify, destroys belief as it reduces one’s economy.  A break-in to one’s home, for example, leaves residents distrustful, vulnerable and suspicious.  New information coming to those people is filtered through a different set of beliefs than prior to the act of thievery.  Eventually, assuming no repetition of the crime, distrust fades, safe feelings return and life goes on.  Love for others replaces fear.  But what if the nature of the theft is not precisely known… and what if the feeling of one’s safety and privacy having been breeched, one’s familial or even personal integrity being threatened by unrecognized thieves, almost continuously… what does a person believe then?

A person would certainly be angry at the violation, the assault on privacy, safety and personhood.  And that feeling would lead a person to be mad at, well… someone – whoever is stealing from him or her.  What is being stolen?  Who is it that should be punished for the constant thievery?

We live, today, right now, in a world of constant thievery, and among those things being stolen are the traditions of America’s founding.  One could posit that history, itself, is being stolen from us as “we” dis-educate our youth and restrict and belittle the beliefs that made the American experiment work and the American Dream real.  It’s unsettling.  What other thefts are being perpetrated?

Pick a state, any state.  How many of its agencies are staffed beyond need and paid beyond reason?  How many departments or programs are suspected of malfeasance, misfeasance and corruption, often political?  Surely some.  Honesty is being stolen every hour of every day.  How many have died from opioids?  How many from in-hospital errors?  How many children in state care were neglected so badly that their health or lives were threatened, perhaps lost?  How are such questions answered to the public on whose behalf all such actions are taken?  Almost never in full truth, often in blatant deception and cover-up.

We are forced by police power to sacrifice our private properties – the gains from our labors – to PAY for governments that lie to us as normal operating process.  It is unsettling.  A little anger is justified.  If one is not angry, he or she isn’t paying attention.

What about our past 3 years nationally, when one political party conspired with federal agencies and officers to attempt to unseat a president?  So many lies were told to us by so many official and “news” organs that the count is without total.  The political divisions exposed over the past 20 years have been sharpened so fiercely that the next 20 years are in grave doubt.  Taxpayers pay for everyone who works in the federal government and they have been lying to us, all, and never more grotesquely than in the years 2016 through 2019 and through the impeachment of president Trump.  They, including many in congress, have lied and stolen from our present and future the innate trust we ought to be able to enjoy with regards to our representatives, so called.

That our heritage has been stolen, tossed away when we weren’t looking, can be realized by noting the groundswell of support for an old communist/socialist as he claims to be the “leader” America needs.  Young people, college students, even many adults seem enthralled by attacks on capitalism and free enterprise, the unfairness of success, the inequality of unequal results for unequal efforts.  It’s all a matter of “fortune” and “unfortune.”  The fortunate ones, regardless of their path to wealth and regardless of the millions of jobs they create and the trillions of tax dollars their enterprises and employees pay to support common goods, should not have any more than they need to live on… the rest to be divided amongst the “unfortunate.”

Truth and reason have been stolen, as have history and fact.  And, it is unsettling.  Even those espousing socialist nonsense feel stolen-from, although they refuse to recognize what their losses truly are.  It makes them hazily angry at the fortunate thieves, for they have no mirrors.

Inheritance far greater than one’s grandmother’s silver has been, is being stolen right from our dining-room buffet, and we have not only left the back door open, we’ve marked the shortest path to the buffet with bright orange duct tape.  How can we tell all these thefts have gone on?  Check the books, the ledgers of our balance sheets.  We’re out of balance.  “What happened?” we ask one another.  “How did we get $23 Trillion in debt?”  “When did it become illegal to separate boys’ and girls’ bathrooms?”

“When did people start to hate others so much that teams of thugs would be allowed to beat them up while police watched?”  “Is this what Socialism has done?  Made us hate each other?”  “They” are stealing our nation.  It’s unsettling.

Culture, Education, Family, Health Care, Politics 2020, Sex

THE PRINCESS AND THE P

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Lyon Hospital, Department of urology. Sex reassignment surgery, transgender Female to Male, hystero-ovariectomy under laparoscopy. Operation which precedes the phalloplasty, hysterectomy, ovariectomy, vaginectomy, (Photo By BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“Male and female created He them.”  For hundreds, thousands, millions of years, this truth was not a burden on humanity.  Many would rather ignore the whole statement because they don’t – or don’t want to – accept the “He” portion.  Somehow, and religious teachers must bear some blame, “we” have, over just a couple of decades, tried to undo the essential facts of biology: male and female.  Being called a female or male, amazingly, collides with thousands of people’s beliefs.  Why has this phenomenon crept out of counselors’ offices and parents’ concern?  Who are they who work so tirelessly to force the sexual variant of Jonestown on the rest of society?

Because lives are definitely lost amongst this new belief structure.

Transgender-ism  is a belief structure.  It is not supported by biological fact in any but the rarest of anomalies.  It is a belief, usually quite temporary, that one’s body is the “wrong” one.  This is a strange thing to believe… strange only if other humans were interested in discovering the source of the belief, itself.  But, strange becomes “normal” and deserving of societal respect if – and only if – the individual’s feelings  have been elevated to the level of truth: truth in the absence of evidence, a new faith.

Non-evidenced “truths” are now receiving legal  status as craven legislators bend over as far as possible to pander to the new faith.  Sadly, there are craven doctors, too.

And craven educators.

Public schools are not merely tolerating and preventing overt discrimination or bullying against children pretending to be their opposite gender, but they are encouraging  transgenderism among those children who are, for the moment, envious  of the opposite sex.  Parents, and professionals, ought to be helping children to be comfortable with their bodies, not to be revolting against them.  At the same time, adults should all be trying to find the source of childrens’ “gender dysphoria.”

The resolution of this heretofor rare condition, is something adults should pursue, even if it means a full social transition.  Few people will need to know that an individual was not born as he or she appears.  Whether full surgical mutilation is called for, is quite another question.

In the past decade the number of dysphoric youth has grown 1,500% to 5,000% and even more in some countries, with the ratio of girls to boys flipping dramatically.  Why?  Transgenderism “advocates” would say that only now are trans youth enjoying the freedom to express their “true” identities, thus accounting for the explosive growth.  Critics of the trend might see a frightening desire, like a virus from the bowels of China, that infects female and male alike, however disproportionately, with the desire to escape the responsibilities of their sex. 

There are unnumbered ways to achieve sexual release, alone, in pairs or even groups, and none require total denial of self, or bodily mutilation, so there is something else at work, beyond the sexual.  Perhaps it is more Prudent to consider a virus that infects not those who reflect its torment but their parents, schools, and social institutions, like unbalanced feminism, which, with other failures of freedom, convince late-term, newborn, toddlers and pre-schoolers (which age socialists and fascists would have include all of the earlier mentioned) to distrust, if not hate, the prospects of womanhood and manhood.  Despite our access to Instagram and Twitter, Panera, Chick Fil-A, Starbucks and weed, our twisted norms create a society in which children don’t want to be, well… who they are.

The result is not true gender dysphoria for most of its claimants, but a hatred for life, itself.  Prior to actual suicide (the end-game for many who attempt to change their sex) these, now, tens of thousands try to kill their personal realities.

For those who are dysphoric, one’s heart must fill with sympathy, and great care should be shown them, and tolerance and kindness.  For most of the new residents of Jonestown, however, new beliefs, alone, can save them however that counseling can be accomplished.  Doctors and clinics that press them with chemical and surgical confirmation of unreality, are but licensed charlatans.  Their parents, worse.

Shame on religious institutions.  From old, old texts, replete with truths eternal, they have made difficult lessons and philosophies not more clear, but softer and “more inclusive,” practically rejecting realities in order to fill pews.  The elegance and majesty of womanhood should be the easiest clay to work into gracefulness and motherhood, but they’ve largely failed to enhance those values.  The responsibilities and required wisdom that men are obligated to accept and to achieve, are trivialized and even derogated, as boys are drugged into submission and global communications portray men not as leaders but as fools.

The institutions of our culture and nationhood, almost as though coordinated by some evil puppeteer, are all reinforcing the concepts of unreality and hyper-sexualization.  Websites produce and provide pornography 24/7 for free, perhaps the most insidious attack on men, marriage and mental health.  Congress after congress ignore this corrosion without even discussing ways to restrict and limit global pornographics.  Why?  Money?  Is this addiction different from opioids, gambling or tobacco?  Or does it simply expose the flaws within males that all “woke” geniuses knew were there all along?

In a thousand ways we have made life, itself, unattractive.  Why would thousands of young people, even youngsters, refuse to the point of embarrassment and mutilation, to be who each actually is?  Is it because so many are born with the “wrong” body?  All of a sudden?  Doubtful.   Birth is not the issue, Prudence believes, but influences, even before birth.  We are teaching boys that being male is a sort of disease; and teaching girls that life is a system of oppressions, including motherhood.

The destruction of social roles and values is reaping its foul rewards with great efficiency.  The end-game is social dissolution, loss of nation-hood, economic stratification and, worse, institutionalized unreality.  What shall we teach our children when lies have gained legal status?