Monthly Archives: March 2022

Crime, Economics, Education, Family, Health Care, Politics 2020, Politics 2021, Politics 2022

LOCKDOWN, LOCKUP

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DON’T PANIC!

The concept of “science” as the basis for public policy has been tried during the past two-plus years, and it has been found not only a failure, but fatally dangerous.  “Public policy,” by definition, means politics, and, suddenly, “science,” which is to say, Medical Science, became grossly politicized (more grossly than it already was).  Logic dictates that politically “guided” science or medicine should be questioned in the most severe and intricate way.  For more than two years, however, such questioning has been made virtually illegal and something to be censored.

We can see, no matter what one’s political viewpoint, that all of our public policies of locking down certain forms of commerce and assembly (even while allowing favored others) had only the true effect of destroying, mainly, free-enterprise businesses, denying elementary education, exposing millions of very vulnerable populations to Covid-19, upsetting and destroying marriages, increasing suicide rates across many age groups, increasing opioid deaths, creating huge disparities in rights, and expanding the reach and power of all levels of government.  Fear, itself, was spread across nations, which simplified the tasks of causing people to act in contravention of their legal rights.  It did not, however, actually limit the spread or medical impacts of the Covid-19 virus.  Otherwise, fewer people would have died in the second year of the “pandemic” when supposedly “safe and effective” vaccines were widely administered… except that more people died in the second year.  If face masks were effective in preventing infection from Covid-19, some statistical proof would exist… somewhere, but it doesn’t.  There are quite a few untruths being spread by government types and those they have co-opted into alliance in the promulgating of ideas that are not so.  For those who cared to learn the untruth of these ideas, these utterances become lies.  And there are many.

For example, the mRNA injections do not constitute “vaccination.”  Quite cleverly, when the “government” called for emergency development of a “vaccine” against the SARS-Cov-2 virus, giant pharmaceutical companies happily took upon themselves the heroic task of creating vaccines that had never succeeded (against corona viruses) and at “warp speed.”  Fortunately, mRNA biotechnology had been developing for a decade and, in fact, was being developed to stop Covid-19 in the fall of 2019, before the “Coronavirus Pandemic” was even heard of, by a company called Moderna, in a city named Wuhan, China, amazingly enough.

So, the “heroic” aspect was not true, nor, it turns out, was the “warp speed.”  It’s possible that the approval and release of the supposed “vaccines” could have been done by June of 2020, rather than immediately after the presidential elections in November.  Ostensibly that was impossible because of the rigorous testing being done to gain even emergency use approval by the independent FDA.  Ooops, there are a couple more… lies, that is.  The testing performed wasn’t all that rigorous, ignored several potentially vulnerable groups (children, pregnant women, etc.) and the FDA is far from independent from either politics or “Big Pharma.”  There seemed to be some political timing on the release of the “vaccines.”  Surely not, you must be shouting – our benign representatives and public servants would never delay life-saving treatment for political reasons… never.  We won’t bring up the refusal of hospitals to perform life-saving procedures on patients who won’t take the injection. (!)  Back to the non-vaccines.

These shots stimulate cells in your body to create spike proteins that are similar to the Covid-19 spike proteins.  What they don’t do, which real vaccines do, is stimulate B-cells and T-cells to create immune response to the pathogen, itself, response that becomes part of your immune profile, ready in the future to “wake up” and fight off the covid virus.  By flooding your system with billions of spike proteins that the body recognizes as foreign, it causes the liver and kidneys and digestive system to get rid of them.  If you happen to be exposed to Covid, itself, during the next couple of months or so thereafter, your body will get rid of those, too.  Are there antibodies to “Covid” created?  Yes, but they won’t be created if there’s a second exposure to Covid, so you need a second injection, then a third.  In effect, the injection hi-jacks the immune system to reject spike proteins.  The story is / was that the mRNA chemicals that induce that action were not going to make “permanent” changes to cells, that it would be out of the body in a couple of weeks, perhaps, and it definitely would-not-affect-your-DNA-itself… no, no, no, no.

So, the big lie continues: these shots aren’t really vaccines, but they are called “vaccines” because people are comfortable with that term, just as they are with “booster” shots.  However, there is also the sad fact that the rather poisonous chemicals of these injections do NOT leave the body in a couple of weeks, and can actually be found over 12 months later, still capable of producing spike proteins. 

Unfortunately, also, spike proteins accumulate in the ovaries, lungs, brain, kidneys, heart and pericardium, and elsewhere, causing “long Covid” and a host of other chronic bad reactions.  So much dis-information, so little time.  Now it is being revealed, drip by drip, that the shots, themselves, weaken your body’s natural immunity – not just towards Covid, but towards, well… everything.  Pathologists have detected, following the injections, significant increases in childhood cancers, for one example, but not just in children!  Adults are being diagnosed with supposed childhood cancers and other diseases, and the increase follows Covid vaccination – apparently.  For some reason, the typical immune responses of millions of Americans are not stopping these diseases that are usually handled without notice by immune systems.  Normal public health regimens would have this uptick carefully studied, but the CDC is not interested.

There are accumulating statistics from several countries that susceptibility to Covid-19 is much greater among fully “vaccinated” and boosted people, than for un-vaccinated people.  At least one country has ceased publishing that data lest the average person misunderstand it.

There has also been noted from insurance companies’ death-benefit statistics, an astronomical uptick in all deaths for 18 to 64-year-olds – just in 2021, year of the “vaccines” – amounting to about 40%.  What?  FORTY PERCENT%?  What in Hell is causing that?  The NIH and the rest of the public-health alphabet-soup of agencies and departments are uninterested.  The rest of us should be very interested.

Very sadly, research in Sweden has shown the mRNA chemicals can actually CHANGE the host DNA in living liver cells.  Oh, no… this was the biggest safety promise of all when these weird injections gained political power: They could not change or damage one’s DNA.  Uh-oh.  Is this going to be another Thalidomide?  Or a new type of cancer, in effect?  Please, someone, tell us the truth… or, if not THEtruth, how about Atruth about these God-forsaken shots.

Maybe the FDA could release all it knows about mRNA injections and the premises under which they were approved, even for emergency use.  Maybe the CDC could reveal all it knows about adverse effects of the shots.  They have a “vaers” system for “voluntary” reporting of bad reactions to all vaccines.  It is Prudent to expect that CDC has a great deal of information about such events, but they’ve released a report that covers only about the first month after emergency-use approval; why not the rest?  More than a year has passed since then.

Would it be asking too much to reveal what the costs have been to the federal government for the development and purchase/distribution of the “approved” vaccines?  How about what the NIH, CDC or NIAID know about TREATMENTS for Covid that can prevent serious disease, hospitalization or ventilation and death.  There are several, some have the status of over-the-counter medications in many parts of the world, and they are not just safe, but extremely safe after decades of use.  There is overwhelming experience and data about their effectiveness as anti-viral products, yet they are virtually illegal to prescribe or administer in the United States.  Is repression of information about these inexpensive, proven-safe drugs, in the realm of lies of omission?

How much are hospitals and extended-care facilities paid by HCCFA, MEDICAID or MEDICARE for care and treatment of ostensible Covid patients?  One good description listed the main ways hospitals made the most:  1) Admit and test the patient – test him or her more than once if necessary to obtain a positive result; 2) Place the patient in a “Covid” ward; Start him or her on Remdesivir (a very dangerous anti-viral linked to liver and kidney damage); 3) As patient declines, place him or her on a ventilator;      4) Discharge patient or release him or her to a mortuary.  What might all of this be worth?  About $100,000!  The key to great billing, however, is the positive test result.

Even less complex regimens are good billing so long as “Covid” is tied to the patient.  When $Millions start to pile up, ethical fences start buckling.  Overstating the number of “Covid” patients – and getting rewarded for doing so – has been a great boost to institutional incomes and a great boost to public hysteria about the danger presented by Covid-19.  Despite all sorts of statistics to the contrary, most Americans believe that Covid is practically a death sentence, following a long, painful decline and probable intubation/ventilation.  Worse, since it is “so contagious” family members can’t visit those in extended care or in hospital, even as they pass away.  Across the country, thanks to most of media burying inconvenient statistics, governors and mayors empowered themselves to strip millions of their citizens and residents of their constitutional rights, and those millions of Americans willingly went along with the restrictions out of FEAR!  Fear generated by a steady stream of real dis-information happily spewed by the so-called “main-stream media.”

People who lost a friend or relative to covid are angry at anyone who questions the mish-mash of illogical, often erroneous “public-health” dictates, as though opponents of the government overreach might be part of the reason their loved-one got sick.  They should be angry!  They should be angry with China, for spreading the disease across the globe after it had escaped from their lab in Wuhan City; they should be angry with the NIH, the CDC and the NIAID, who surreptitiously passed the research, including Gain-of-Function research, off to the Wuhan Laboratory because it was illegal to do it in the United States; they should be angry with those same bozos and the FDA for not only approving these increasingly useless injections, but also for denying and suppressing safe potential treatments that have been shown to almost stop the spread of the Covid virus in the body, allowing natural immunity to fight the infection off far more quickly than it could have, potentially preventing the deaths of half a million or more of the reported “Covid” fatalities.  They should be angry… but not at people who refuse to wear ineffective face masks.

They should be angry, as well, at political “leaders,” or controllers, who locked down our economy as they did, and locked down our personal activities as they did.  The collateral deaths from suicide, drug overdose and, in a sense, broken hearts, as lives, businesses and marriages crumbled, amounted to more than a quarter of a million.  If “an enemy” had invaded and killed over 200,000 Americans, we’d all be angry at him, her or them… certainly.  And we would fight back until he, she, it were vanquished: totally defeated and rendered unable to repeat that evil action.  Unfortunately, we were convinced to TAKE DIRECTION FROM the enemy!  And here we are, still arguing over face masks for toddlers.  Shame on us.

Biden, Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Politics 2022, Trump

FULCRUM OF HISTORY

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NATO potato

Prudence observed, recently, that 2022 would be “the” year.  It would be the year that is the fulcrum of history, thought Prudence Leadbetter, and every passing hour appears to confirm that prognosis.  Not only is it a mid-term election year in the United States, but war has broken out in Europe, Canada briefly descended into fascism over Covid vaccine mandates, and China could finally decide it’s a good time to smash Taiwan.  Why should Putin have all the fun?

Americans are going to have their first opportunity to balance the scales after having allowed a most questionable election to install the worst administration in a long lifetime.  There are many questions as to what the consequences of current events may ultimately be, and people have a right to ponder the hundreds of possibilities.  Let’s consider a few.

How long and how large will the Russo-Ukraine war be?  In one view, the best result is a quick victory for Russia and Vladimir Putin.  That will stop the fighting and provide some satisfaction for the Russians, probably stopping their adventurism.  On the other hand, the Ukrainians are not interested in being part of Russia, again, and are fighting ferociously for their land, families, homes and neighbors.  Europe and the U. S. are belatedly providing ammunition, supplies and armaments to Ukraine to whatever degree they can be transhipped to a nation at war for its life.  Without a doubt, the take-over of Ukraine is not proceeding, for Putin, as he intended.  This has made him less rational; he has placed his nuclear forces on “high alert.”

Had the first desired scenario worked out: rapid collapse of the Ukranian government and surrender of Ukranian forces in a few days, perhaps with Zelenskyy fleeing in fear, then Russia could clamp down on Ukraine, start making nice with its NATO neighbors and the world would adjust, amidst grumbling and sputtering, to a new reality.  Putin would be left stronger inside Russia and on the world stage.

However, the second, more dangerous scenario may be playing out.  That is that Russian brutality must increase to the point of war crimes, if not already there, and even if successful in crushing Ukranian resistance, Russia is left a pariah nation and Putin, if he retains power in Moscow, will lose face and influence and any semblance of trust around the world.  Russia will be sanctioned by loss of trade, particularly in oil and gas, weakening it nationally, and possibly reducing cooperation with bordering republics.  NATO will be strengthened.  Amidst this messier turn of events, Putin might do something really stupid… something that draws the United States into direct conflict.  God forbid.

Another question;  Will Democrats attempt even more blatant election fraud to hang onto power in the 2022 midterms?  Despite the inability to prosecute any of the most questionable results, an inability built into the distributed nature of Presidential elections, there are many questions, including Constitutional ones, that no court, including the Supreme Court was interested in hearing, about the conduct of elections in 2020.  Nor did any state want to reverse its certification of electors when that would place them on the ”outs” with a new administration controlling the flows of dollars to state budgets.  It can all be “blamed” on the fear of Covid-19, but the extra-legal changes to voting practices in 2020, were THANKS to Covid-19, not fear of it.

That 2020 experience should be instructive to Americans: the Democrat Party is willing to subvert both standards and laws to retain its hold on power.  The desperation they felt in the face of a most-likely re-election of Donald Trump and his exposure of the deep state bad actors who participated in the attempted destruction of the Trump presidency, was enough to encourage that party to attack election laws in many states, permitting vote-by-mail and unlimited absentee voting, vote harvesting and numerous other weakenings of voter identification.  There is evidence of international electronic connection to voting machines that were, ostensibly, not legally internet connected, and within that illegal action, evidence that foreign actors created blocks of votes that were “dumped” into the electronic records of key states when it became obvious that Trump’s majority would be larger than they had planned to overcome.  They got away with it and Biden’s electors were certified.

What, then, are Democrats prepared to attempt in November of 2022?

Next question:  Will China seize on Biden’s weakness to attack Taiwan in 2022?  Despite its obvious use of Covid-19 to weaken other nations, China is not yet the pariah it should be, internationally.  Many countries are beholden to China for “development” loans they have “paid off” with grants of industrial, raw-material, or military access to their resources, land or coastlines.  Many western leaders are becoming richer through Chinese-led corruption, the greatest of which is the Biden crime family, followed closely by Nancy Pelosi’s husband and Mitch McConnell’s wife.  Hundreds of millions of Chinese dollars enter the U. S. political arena through universities, non-governmental organizations, various non-profits and relatively direct political contributions through straw donors.  Politically, America is compromised.  It is a Chinese strategy that is well-known and well-ignored by our “elites” and the political class.

Does China believe the time is right to move on Taiwan?  We’ll find out, probably around Labor Day.  They, and Democrats, will perceive that crisis as politically positive for Democrats.  God forbid.

Will there be a banking or currency crisis in 2022?  The question hinges not only upon the long-term desire of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia and others to unseat the U. S. dollar as the universal and reserve currency, but also on the oil and gas global trade – something in which President Biden has severely weakened the U. S. position and influence.  It’s almost as though he intended to damage the U. S. economy in as many ways as possible.  Be that as it may, trade dollars, or “petro-dollars,” in practice, became the standard for international conversion for most trade.  This status has also made it possible to create dollars (of DEBT) whenever the U. S. felt like it, which, since the Great Society began, followed by Nixon’s closing of the gold conversion “window,” in 1973, is virtually every budget year.  The government used to borrow in times of war or depression, only – during actual crises, in other words.  However, since the federalization of welfare, there has been a “crisis” nearly every year. 

The U. S. has “borrowed” something over $30 TRILLION dollars, since then, without ever attempting to pay it back.  In return we have seen fit to act as the world’s policeman and foreign-aid piggy-bank.  With the fall of the Soviet Union and general maintenance of stability in global trade and relative peace, sort-of, for the U. S., the rest of the world went along with America’s debt creation and erosion of dollar-value, and our de-facto empire, but the system has grown tiresome and the U. S. has grown less reliable.  Plus, in our soft-hearted / soft-headed immorality, we have gained many enemies that we refuse to recognize or even describe, many of whom are unmoved by stable trade.  Indeed, some have brought America to virtual surrender regardless of the hundreds of billions of military dollars and thousands of lives we have “invested.”

Fewer nations trust us as allies than did 50, 30 or even 10 years ago, possibly than did even 4 years ago.  Precious few will defend our economy when China and others decide to pull the plug on the dollar.  What will that mean?  To start, look at the labels on things you buy.

Many of our vegetables and fruits come from other countries, for example.  If the international standing of the U. S. dollar evaporates, what will we use to buy that produce?  If South and Central American nations, New Zealand, Southeast Asian nations start to require Chinese renminbi for trade, where will we get some to trade with?  Buy them with our own dollars?  Why would China want them?  Sell some gold to China?  Sell some, ahhh… what, to China?  Land???

The U. S. has been acting like an international social-service agency for decades.  This has fitted with the leftist view because it weakens the dominance of the U. S. A.  We have agreed, repeatedly, to buy products to help smaller, poorer nations.  We have agreed to offshore manufacturing to, mainly, China, but also to several other nations, including in Europe.  We’re such nice, friendly folks.  Now, we haven’t sent fast-food “manufacturing” to other countries, so maybe we could trade hamburgers for our fruits and vegetables.  Eh, probably not.  French Fries, maybe.  In our dense “wisdom,” we have already sold off a lot of farmland and food processing to China.  That sounds smart.

Much of America’s power is wrapped up in our position in the global banking system.  Most nations store their gold in New York, for example, with international transactions performed on handcarts between vaults a few yards apart.  Most currency exchange rates are based on the U. S. dollar, secondarily on the British pound sterling, a remnant of the British empire’s dominance prior to World War One.  This works because every nation relies on dollars for international trade, a remnant of American dominance after World War Two.  The final remnant of dollar-dominance harkens back to the final closing of the gold window in 1973.  America had been willing to sell gold to multiple other nations at the then-current exchange rates with the dollar (“redeeming dollars” held by other nations), but we were running out of physical gold.  Enter the “petro-dollar.” 

The U. S. made a deal with the House of Saud that Saudi Arabia would sell oil contracts with other countries denominated in dollars.  Other OPEC nations had to go along.  Several ramifications manifested.  One was/is that most nations needed to have dollars in order to buy oil, the most widely traded commodity.  Because of a high trust level in the honesty of U. S. institutions – including banks, like the Federal Reserve – countries held dollars as part of their reserves.  This “soaked up” a lot of dollars and helped/helps maintain the international value of the dollar.

The U. S., however, effectively flaunts the benefit of having other nations hold and trade in dollars, by creating debt for its own domestic purposes.  This ramification exposes the fraudulent nature of American governance over the past 50 years or so, and now amounts to more than $30 TRILLION, with no end in sight.  This one process threatens U. S. sovereignty and fiscal stability more than any other.  Another ramification is the frenetic speculation in currency exchange rates.  By trading in currency “futures,” countries “forced” to hold petro-dollars are able to hedge against dollar fluctuations, but the net effect is to weaken the dollar to keep commodity prices low (oil, natural gas, wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, pork, beef, steel, chicken, etc.).  It also makes American manufactured products relatively expensive, helping to encourage manufacturers to off-shore production to lower-cost countries, hurting American labor and other economic segments, and driving up the need for Americans to buy products from overseas.  So long as other nations need to have dollars to obtain energy and other commodities, they will accept dollars in payment for their manufactured goods.  What if that stopped?  Can you imagine astronomical price increases?  Rates like 100% per year or more?

Life would change.

Financial gurus have been predicting an economic “reset” for years, and the unseating of the U. S. dollar is its basis.  Yet, politically, we continue to borrow and spend as though the rest of the world will put up with American mendacity forever.  What the Hell is a debt ceiling, anyway?

Very soon, Russia will complete its Ukraine travesty, simultaneously emasculating Europe and NATO, and China will then finalize its move on Taiwan.  What “sanctions” do the Biden administration expect to use to counter that move?  Whether sanctions or real military resistance, China always has the leverage over American debt, and will happily move to unseat the dollar, completing its own elevation to dominance in the world.  At that point the U. S. will be unable to AFFORD to defend itself, an unforgivable circumstance.  Would we turn over the keys to the country in a Rose Garden ceremony?  Do you think we’d go nuclear?  Do you think our progress on transgender equity in our military services enhances our deterrence?

Americans have elected, re-elected and re-elected, sometimes 15 times or more, the same scoundrels who have become wealthy in office while plunging the country into unheard-of debt.  That debt is on us, everyone, not on those we’ve elected, because they have done that deed in our name.  And we have rewarded them for it.  Can we possibly turn our eyes away from the truth and expect life to go on with borrowed funds forever?  Do we think it’s too complicated for us poor rubes to figure out?  One day those debts (loans) will be “called” when that move can do the most damage to us.  Of all the weaponry, research and advantage we have allowed our enemies to steal, the greatest threat is the one we created for ourselves, and that just to keep certain liars in power.  Shame on us.  Maybe this will abruptly change in 2022 when Republicans take over from the Democrats.  If you have evidence of such being likely, please share it widely.

Amidst the wholesale weakening of the United States nation since Trump left office, we are suddenly facing the one alliance we have long hoped would never manifest: China and Russia, and in combination with China’s long-term economic attacks (including organized theft of technology and advanced research), now a combined, hot, military threat.  Most Americans, automatically sympathetic towards the suffering Ukranians, are mostly blind toward the imminent threat of Chinese military action.  This is upon us while the Biden administration has halted the momentum toward strengthening the U. S. military.  God forbid that our country face its second existential threat while the fools in this administration are in charge.  Our national independence and sovereignty could be lost in a week, if it comes to that.

Education, Family, Responsibility

LETTER TO A GRADUATE

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Dear Jon,

Congratulations are truly in order.  This is a milestone.  You have a diploma, but what does it mean?

That is, what does it mean to those who do not know you?   The LACK of a High School diploma would mean a lot to people who knew only that much about you, but the fact that you have a diploma simply places you in a group of hundreds of thousands of young people who got one.  Now what?

Some kids are lucky.  They have a strong direction and interest by the time they finish highschool and they go right off to college to learn more about what interests them and some of them even wind up working at what interested them when they began college.

Many don’t.  They go to college, spend tons of money to get a degree and eventually wind up doing something entirely different.  However, the fact that they have that COLLEGE diploma, means a great deal to potential employers and colleagues.  That’s because there is no law that says a person has to attend college.

Gaining a college diploma means that an individual had enough drive and self-management to complete a course of study, and almost regardless of what the course of study was, that diploma marks the person as a good do-er – someone who could get his or her homework done even when parents weren’t there to nag and remind.  So, maybe that person can be trusted to do valuable work in exchange for money.

Some kids are even luckier.  They have a drive to learn and excel in a particular field and then go on to master that field and strive to “make a difference” in the “world.”

For many, the easiest way, or, at least, most certain way to make that difference is by becoming a teacher, and there is some truth to that.  As a teacher one is able to affect the minds and beliefs of dozens and hundreds of children – affects that will be part of them for the rest of their lives.  So teaching is pretty significant… but it’s not the path for everyone.

Sometimes the best difference that a person may make in the world derives from what he or she teaches just one or two other people – maybe children or grandchildren.  You never know.

The world, however, is still there, ready for all those “differences” to be made in it.  All those differences are not made only by high-minded diploma-holders:  the greatest ideas will evaporate if some do-er doesn’t make them real.  Often, the thinker and the do-er is the same person, and we celebrate those people.  Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Edwin Land, Thomas Edison, Clara Barton, Marie Curie, and a host of other industrial, military and political leaders are among that group.

Then there are those who are famous for having done what others dreamed up: people like Neil Armstrong.  He didn’t conceive of the machinery that took him to the moon,

but he had an ability of courage and good thinking, combined, to execute the great ideas and engineering of others.

Most of us are not like that.  Most of us are pretty-well occupied dealing with “life” as it comes along, earning a living and meeting our responsibilities.  Eventually, in the course of doing what’s best for ourselves and our families, many of us also give to others in time or money or otherwise, and make our own little, un-heralded “differences” in the “world.”  This applies to most, and is the greatest, cumulative force for good in the “world.”  Some turn criminal for whatever reasons, but most are good and civilization and society move haltingly, unevenly, even stumblingly toward an average better life for all people.  You can see there is a long way to go.

Which means there is plenty of room for you to make your own difference as you make your own way, your own life, your own living.  Eventually you will do your own good.  But, how?  Ay!  There’s the rub.

I know you didn’t have the most happy, care-free experience through school.  Neither did I.  But that’s done, now.  Now – right this instant – you are alive, healthy and strong, smart and good-looking and existing at the time of greatest opportunity ever!  Right now is when you can’t shuck your responsibility to yourself because you “deserve” a vacation or a little “rest” after your twelve grueling years slaving over textbooks.

Right now is when you have to make a map, of sorts.  It’s not a map that shows roads, trails, paths and correct turns at every intersection.  It’s a map of decision, though – definitely of decision.  You are very fortunate – lucky, even – that you are where you are with the people in your life who are here.  You have a smart brain.  And, it’s time to make a decision about making decisions.  Life on this planet is based on assumptions, beliefs and decisions.  And love.  It’s also based on love.

First, let’s examine what love has to do with it.  You are a product of love, for example.  Your mom and dad loved enough to go to the trouble of creating you, but not simply as a gift to YOU, but as a gift to each other, and with some expectation – an assumption, if you will, that whoever you were would give love back in return.  That is the real circle of life.

Love is not infinite.  It’s huge, but it has limits.  People who never return love that you send their way, can literally suck all the love out of you, leaving emptiness.  By returning love, you can multiply it, and the person to whom you returned that love not only has as much love as he or she originally had for you, but more than that.  Multiplication.  It’s a really cool phenomenon.  We don’t always call it love. 

Oftentimes the energy or effect that we might call love, is called and expressed as trust.  When you are trustworthy, when you keep your word, when you keep a secret, when you deliver on a promise, when you meet right expectations… you are expressing the force we call love.  People who learn to trust you develop an assumption about you that is called trust, but is a form of love.  Like love, trust given in return tends to

multiply trust between people.  There are very few “good” accomplishments that do not include a lot of trust between people.  It is the unwritten contract of honesty that enables most of the commerce of life, both monetary and personal.  Honesty, trust, love.  Obviously it’s important and you know you have already learned to trust quite a few people in your first eighteen years on Earth.  Have they all learned to trust you back?  That’s the first decision on your decision map: am I willing to do what it takes to be a person of trust?  Am I willing to sacrifice, sometimes, to maintain that trust?  Am I willing to do what it takes to deliver on promises I have made?  Will people who know me always know that I may be trusted to keep my word?  That’s the first decision, Jon.

People who live in accordance with that decision generally GIVE as much as they RECEIVE.  Like emotional love, people who accept the trust of others and don’t return it by action and discipline, will soon suck all the trust out of a relationship, leaving emptiness.  I hope you decide to be a trust generator.

You are bound to encounter people who are not worthy of your trust and you must be wise and careful of where you place YOUR trust.  You know someone like Frank Allen, for example, can always be trusted, but there are those who will lie to you, take advantage of your trust, even steal from you, and you must recognize when trust is the wrong thing to do with that person.  Trust is big but not infinite, and it’s extremely fragile.   A solid trust relationship is worth more than gold, and you are obligated to protect and nurture it.  It’s everything from doing what you said to saving the life of the soldier next you in battle – or him saving you.

We all live on a path built out of assumptions… assumptions that are part of our personal belief structure.  For example, we assume that the sun is coming up on time each morning; we assume that when we put our foot down on the floor that it will be firm and able to support us – same thing with the ground.  We expect – or assume – that tap water is safe to drink.  There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of assumptions that we have learned to depend upon.  Most accidents, surprises, shocks, injuries… the list is long, that happen, are when something we assumed to be true or real, is not.  Or it’s when something that we are in the habit of assuming, but which can actually vary, has varied and we fail to observe it – we fail to adjust our assumptions.

For example, a driver may assume that the person in the intersection who appears to be signaling for a turn is actually going to make that turn.  We have experienced enough instances when a turn is signaled and then actually made, that we “let down our defenses” and assume that the turn will be made this fine morning, too.  Unfortunately, sometimes the signaler is not aware he or she is signaling and instead drives right into you, or, worse, you drive right into him or her.

Assumptions can let you down.  Assumptions are created out of one-way trust.  Since the ground has always been solid, you can assume it will be today, also, but you can’t “trust” that the ground will be solid, can you?  The ground has no heart.  It can’t love you, it can’t “return” your trust.  You must recognize that making assumptions is strictly

a one-sided activity.  Make a decision, please, to never assume too much.  Maintain conscious awareness… and a sense of skepticism.  It is an old saying, but totally true: “Things are not always what they appear to be.”

The greatest pain and emotional injuries occur where someone has assumed a certain relationship exists – perhaps one of trust, or even love – when it does not, or that it is of a particular nature when it is something quite different.  The assuming party then acts or trusts in a certain way and is thunderstruck when what he or she expected would happen is completely different from what actually does happen – like assuming the other driver were going to turn – and great pain is the result.

From that might spring great anger or hatred, two things you want to avoid with as much power as you can muster, for they are corrosive, like a strong acid, eating away at your abilities to love and trust.  Don’t assume too much.

You know something about the “scientific method,” I’m sure.  An observer takes note of a phenomenon – maybe as simple as a pin dropping to the floor.  He or she measures how long it takes for the pin to reach the floor and creates an experiment where the same pin can be measured falling to the floor, again.  After two or three repetitions, the observer, armed with the recorded observations, may make a statement that gravity has a “rate” of attraction.  In other words, a weight equal to the weight of the pin will fall the observed distance in so many thousandths of a second, every time.  Others won’t even try the same experiment – they begin to assume the truth of the observer’s statement about falling pins.  Can you already see how many mistakes the others are making?  Let’s list a few:

  1. Does a square chip of metal the weight of that pin fall at the same rate?
  2. Does the pin dropped head down fall differently than point down?
  3. What if the pin is dropped sideways instead of head or point down?
  4. Is it different in a vacuum than in the air?
  5. What about if it were dropped in humid air, or bone-dry air?
  6. What if it were dropped in a freezer at 32 degrees below zero?
  7. If you climbed a mountain and dropped the pin the same height at an altitude of 10,000 feet above sea level, would it fall at exactly the same rate?
  8. What about if you went to the shores of the Dead Sea and dropped it there?
  9. What if you went to another place on Earth at exactly the same conditions, would it fall at exactly the same rate?

Wow.  Such a simple experiment with so many variables!   Who knew?  The point is, just like relationships in life, work, families and friendships, a single observation can’t be the basis of trust or love.  You must decide that you will test for some variables before you start assuming that something is true, real or honest – ie. trustworthy – between yourself and new acquaintances.  This also means that you can’t assume that you have the trust of other people, or that you have the right to be combative or quick to anger with others.  You have to find a pattern of truth from multiple observations.  When you have a basis for trust, your relationship with others will be the best it can be.  If you assume a level of trust and it proves to not be real, you will be hurt and so will the other person, and so will some around you.  Please, make a decision that you will be a wise observer: ready to trust, but only when it’s proper and good.

Of course, a lot of these decisions and observations and even skepticism, apply to you, yourself, as well.  Do you keep promises to yourself?  Do you trust yourself?  What if you said to yourself that you were going to become an expert at… gaming software, for example.  Are you willing to do what it takes to become that expert, to gain that expertise?  Will you keep your word to yourself?

Or, if you find that it is hard work to keep that promise, will you talk yourself out of caring about that promise?

Or, are you willing to find out what the steps will be to gain that expertise, so that you can then plan to achieve it?  In other words, are you going to become a great    do-er or simply dream about becoming one?

Maybe simpler terms are easier.  If you lived in an apartment and there was no food in the cupboards or the refrigerator, would you be willing to do what it takes to buy some food?  Or would you go to a soup-kitchen and beg for a meal?

Those are promises you make to yourself.  Everyone has relationships with others where he or she keeps a high trust level, protecting confidences, keeping promises, stuff like that, yet fails to keep a promise to him- or herself.  You are the only person who can make that trust decision; you are the only person who has the ability to observe whether you have proven to be trustworthy to yourself.

It is that tiny, tiny sliver of distance between trusting yourself or not, that determines how we live our lives.  “This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.”

So, you must decide, and now is when you must.  How will I live?  And you can’t leap, in one step, one experiment, one observation, from where you are to some ultimate dream or goal.  You need a number of observations.  You can try college or junior college and find it a perfect fit for your “map.”   You might observe that it is not.

You could “apprentice” yourself in a field you are interested in, and work for a while before going to college.  You’ll have a lot of observations on which to base your self-trust.

You could take a minimum-wage job and master it.  You will be amazed to see how many doors open up as a result.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  It is YOUR decision to be a drudge or a dynamo.  You took that job with Frank at the Elks and became a dynamo, gaining an excellent reputation, there, while helping a lot of people you don’t even know.  You TOOK the $25.00 but you GAVE much more.  It’s a formula for a good life.  You also gained many observations about cause and effect, work and rest, starting and finishing, cooperation and independence, expertise and apprenticeship.

You can do hard jobs.  You may not always like what has to be done, but you can do hard work.  That’s pretty important.  The greatest successes in America are based on starting at the “bottom” and working your way up.  Every famous general started at the “bottom.”

Finally, you must never stop learning, reading or teaching.  Learn things so that you can teach others about them.  I hope you make this decision / promise to yourself.  None of us knows enough.  The mind is always at a new level, having accumulated the education of yesterday.  Now, it’s today.  You can’t stay here, for tomorrow is coming.  You can try, but you’ll fail in everything if you think today is your forever.

Today is the only day in which you can prepare for tomorrow.  Whether you intend to (which I hope) or not, you ARE preparing for tomorrow.  It’s almost like magic.  No matter WHAT you do today, it is preparation for tomorrow.

The magic is in your soul.   It’s you.

Foreign Policy

BUFFETED

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General Xi’s chicken.

A world that has been buffeted for more than two years by a manufactured pandemic is now witness to a military assault on a neighboring country with full-blown invasion, bombings, heavy weapons and classical military pincer-movement on the neighbor’s capitol.  People and troops are dying, children are screaming and the citizens of the attacked nation are proving their mettle in the face of overwhelming force arrayed against them.  It is happening in the midst of what the World Economic Forum, an assemblage of ultra-wealthy bankers, actual and would-be dictators and global merchants, are hoping is the correct time to execute “The Great Reset” – a globalization of governance and finance and production that will cement the oligarchs into power, while redistributing some wealth to all the less-fortunate denizens of the planet sufficient to keep them from rising up against the idea of perpetual second-class-ism.

Given that the perpetrator is the dictator of Russia, an oligarch and grand grifter in his own right, it is likely that the military assault he is so proud of is happening with at least tacit permission of the “WEF,” if not its approval.  “Why?  And why now?” poorly informed Americans are asking.  Of greater concern to those same questioners: “What will this do to gas prices?”  And so it goes.

Russia is smashing Ukraine, one of the former Soviet “republics” that gained freedom upon the Soviet Union’s dissolution 30 years ago.  Dictator-in-fact, Vladimir Putin, an old KGB operator once stationed in East Germany, is redressing grievances he believes the Russian people have with an independent Ukraine.  The current U. S. leadership has not only hamstrung itself with ideological bindings that, so far at least, severely limit the options the U. S. has for countering or defusing this hottest stage of a war we barely understand.  There is danger at almost every direction we might go.

In other words, hobbling American oil and gas production to accomplish some fallacious climate modification, has exposed the utter “boobishness” of our foreign policy establishment.  The ability of these dopes to risk everything and surrender everything in Afghanistan, should have opened the eyes of those who engineered certification of Biden’s election in 2020.  In a just world, the people, including voters, who put the Biden administration into office would be begging forgiveness from their fellow Americans and from most of the Western world.  Elections have consequences.

Russia’s economy is not proportional to its geography, and it is heavily dependent upon oil and gas exports.  By reversing America’s energy independence and surplus, President Biden provided Russia with both increasing revenues, propping up Putin’s preparations for war, and with increased leverage over western Europe’s need for natural gas.  In short, kow-towing to ultra-leftists and believers in the Climate-Change faith has yielded utterly stupid national and international policies.  Can we hope that the Biden administration might reverse its worst ideas?  We can correct mistakes; it is more difficult to fix stupidity.