propaganda

From Ruby Ridge to Gaza’s Ruins: When the Right Cheers Tyranny Abroad

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The American right was outraged by Ruby Ridge when Federal agents killed a man’s dogs, son and wife and the deadly raid of the Branch Davidians that killed 76 in the cult—including 20-28 children.

And, indeed, Randy Weaver had basically been entrapped by the FBI and was just a guy who wanted to left alone. And there is no indication the Branch Davidians would have ever killed their own children.

But the ATF says they were saving children in the Waco, Texas incident. Here’s a direct quote of Janet Reno in her testimony to Congress afterwards:

We did everything we could to avoid loss of life… I thought it was the best way to save the lives of those inside, particularly the children.

So, since she said it, we believe it, right? We can blame Mr Weaver and David Koresh for what transpired. They broke the law and it is, therefore, their own criminal actions that provoked a Federal response. If you don’t want a deadly raid—sell all of your firearms and live at peace with the progressives that rule over you!

Many in this country would cheer bans on ‘assault weapons’ and celebrate as their ‘far-right’ neighbors were gunned down for failing to comply. It would be just deserts, a direct consequence of someone who was not keeping pace with civilization, and their blood on their own hands.

Of course, I would strongly disagree. The land and the rights therein belong to we the people, not the government. People have a right to defend themselves. And if you back people into a corner do not be surprised if they come out swinging.

There is an obvious lack of understanding about the plight of Palestinian people and their decades long struggle against settlers from Europe and around the world.

Zionism, supported by anti-Semitic British politician Lord Balfour, was essentially an equivalent to Hitler’s Madagascar plan. In that he wanted Jews to live anywhere but in his own country and thus declared that the Jews should have a homeland. The only problem being that the land chosen, called the British Mandate for Palestine, already had an indigenous population (of Muslims, Christians and native Jews) that were not enthused about being replaced.

Terrorism was initiated as a tactic by Zionists, who were absorbed into the Israeli state, and not Palestinians.

At first the fight between settlers and the Palestinians (meaning those who lived in that place before the Europeans arrived) was riots and evenly matched. But in time, with a brutal campaign of terror bombing and assassinations, including the murder of a Jewish settler later turned Anti-Zionist:

On June 30, 1924, Jacob Israël de Haan was assassinated in Jerusalem by members of the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary organization. De Haan, born in 1881 in the Netherlands, had moved to Palestine in 1919 as a committed Zionist but became disillusioned with the movement’s secular nationalism and its treatment of the indigenous Arab population. He aligned himself with the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community, particularly under Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, and became a vocal anti-Zionist, advocating for cooperation with Arabs and opposing the establishment of a Jewish state. As a political spokesman for the Haredim, he worked to undermine Zionist efforts, including plans to meet with British officials in London to argue against Zionist policies.

The settler’s eventually got the upper hand in their conflict with the native population, declared statehood in 1948. Secured their claim with a Pearl Harbor style preemptive strike after Egypt closed the Straits of Turn in response to Israel’s downing of six Syrian aircraft. This Six-Day War is sold as being a miracle, but is really just a case of the most aggressive and ready to go side gaining an advantage before the enemy even had their pants on. The Zionist project has been very audacious from the start, relying on support of first the British Empire and now the US to keep alive, and there was never remorse for any hardship imposed or death caused.

So when I see yet another meme parroting Zionist propaganda, portraying settlers as civilized and all Gazans as monsters, it just makes me want to vomit. This is what I am talking about:

Prejudiced much?

It’s hard to know where to start breaking a statement like this down. Let’s start with just the facts: Israel has blockaded Gaza, since 2007, restricting the medical supplies, food, and fuel—directly endangering babies’ lives. The result is that 1 in 4 Gaza children under five faced acute malnutrition.  There has been no effort to “save every baby” in Gaza—despite precision guided munitions, and every advantage, tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed and many more grievously wounded.

Second, the Isreali Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, is on record calling Gazans “human animals” and has even vowed to “eliminate everything,” which is obviously a plan being carried out when you consider all of those deliberate strikes on the Gazan healthcare facilities:

…there were at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, claiming significant casualties among doctors, nurses, medics and other civilians and causing significant damage, if not complete destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Then the recent attack on ambulances and EMTs, the IDF brazenly lied about the circumstances of this war crime (exposed by a video) where these first responders were found with hands bound and executed.  The IDF uses an AI system called ‘Lavander‘ to pick targets:

Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

These are not the moves of a military or political establishment trying to save lives, that looks like a collective punishment or ethnic cleansing—because it is.

Netanyahu is a man who has sabotaged the two-state solution (by supporting Hamas) and there is little doubt he saw the October 7th attack as an opportunity to finally annex Gaza for Israeli settlers. There is little evidence that the Likud party even cares about their own casualties, other than to use them to paint Palestinians as monsters.

But what about those Gazans?

What if the shoe were on the other foot?

Surely these bloodthirsty terrorists who—did you hear about October 7th—went on a wild killing spree claiming the lives of 1,139 Israelis. See! Proof that they want to kill all the babies!

But let’s back up just a second. First of all, not everyone in Gaza participated in that—Hamas wasn’t elected nor does it represent all people in the strip. Second, how do we really know who killed who? There is ample evidence of friendly fire (I read Israeli news), you had IDF helicopter gunships unloading their ordinance on random traffic, panic, and also a possible implementation of the Hannibal directive or when the IDF will kill their own rather than let them become the bargaining chips for a prisoner exchange. In other words, political objectives are more important than human life.

Hamas made a calculated move. The only way they can get back people that the IDF took from them over the years is for them to have their own hostages. Israel has held about 4500 Palestinians. 310 in detention without any right to trial. And those who have gone to trial have about as much chance of fair treatment as Donald Trump does in front of a Manhattan jury—literally no chance.

So what would you do if your uncle, father son or brother were being indefinitely held by the Chinese occupation forces in Texas, wouldn’t you be tempted to find a way to get them back?

But what about the Bidas family?

The cute redhead boys?

What about them? How do you know they weren’t killed in an IDF airstrike? There was no independent autopsy to back the Israeli claims they were killed by their captors and this makes no sense whatsoever. Why would Hamas want dead bargaining chips? Why would they turn over the bodies if they murdered them in cold blood?  And why is the Bidas family threatening to sue Netanyahu for using their tragedy to sell his bloody campaign?

Anyhow, just listen to what Hamas hostages have said about their own experience after being released. They were fed well and their sanitary needs were met, obviously it wasn’t a five star treatment and certainly not free of abuse, but this is a comparison and compare it to the credible allegations of Palestinian boys being raped by their guards in Israeli prisons.

In the end, neither side is a monolith. Israel has good and bad people, as does Gaza—Hamas doesn’t represent the population of Gaza any more than Netanyahu represents all of Israel nor does Zionism represent every Jew in the world. There are millions of Palestinians. Some may want to kill every Israeli.  But then Netanyahu, the actual leader of Israel, has called the Gazans “Amalek” which is to say a people God instructed Biblical Israel to kill man, woman and child. So how is that not a call for extermination?

It’s just very strange to me that many who are so sympathetic to right-wing characters like Randy Weaver or those Waco cultists suddenly believe propaganda because it’s coming from Israel. Why are you carrying water for a foreign power that takes billions from us, sank one of our Navy ships in international waters, and gives us nothing in return?

We don’t need to pick a team here—let’s just oppose baby killing no matter who is doing it!

If Israel wanted to stop killing babies in Gaza it would.

Holocaust Then and Now: From Hidden Gas Chambers To Children Burned Alive

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The other day I saw a Facebook ad for a charity of some kind featuring a boy that was covered head to toe in burns.  His body quivered, his breaths short, labored, and he is clearly in distress. 

Thinking this was just some unfortunate accident being exploited for donations it was too much for me (as a father) to see.  My first thought was who is putting this ad on social media?  I posted a combination of my concern for the child and a question of the appropriateness of putting this video on social media.

But later someone responding to my initial comment told me the where and why—and it changed everything.  This baby was not just a random victim of a kitchen accident in a third world country as I had imagined.  No, this was a deliberate act.  It is part of a terror and revenge campaign being waged using bombs provided by our tax dollars.  It is acceptable collateral damage to those on the side of this state actor—which has kept their perpetual victimhood status due to an event before we were born.

Apparently now they have a blank check to do as they please because of the bad thing that happened to their people approaching a century ago on another continent.  Never again is only about their suffering then, protecting their own, and not a call to oppose all genocides or ethnic cleansing campaigns.  They would tell us that the cruelty against this baby in the social media post, and the tens of thousands like him, is all justified because of an attack over a year ago when nearly 1200 died in the chaos of a border incursion and 251 were taken hostage.

However, in the same way I had absolutely nothing to do with American slavery and have not profited from it, this young child is not responsible for what others have done and no less precious than the red-headed Bidas boys killed in the fog of war and are now used as part of a propaganda campaign to continue the bloodshed.  If your outage is selective and only based on whose child is being maimed or killed, then you lack true Christian compassion.

Are You Better Than Your Ancestors?

You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started! (Matthew 23:29a-32 NIV)

There are thousands—tens of thousands—of memorials to an event we call Holocaust and more continue to be built.  Presumably it is so we remember those who were killed and never repeat this horrendous slaughter ever again.  In the Nazi Germany all people who belonged to various ethnic groups and categories were made collectively guilty of trying to crimes against the German people, forced behind walls of concentration camps and then secretly killed by the regime.

The Nazis, despite all their propaganda and hate, took care to hide the reality they were on an extermination campaign.  From their literature, they were “resettling” the victims and that the “atrocity stories” were nothing but malicious lies.  They tried to keep most Germans in the dark about what was truly taking place.  Had they broadcast their genocide for all to see, a good part of German society would likely not have been okay with it—why else would they have denied?

However, there is a modern parallel where those doing the industrial scale murder are shameless.  They watch and cheer as little children are shredded, limbs torn from their young bodies, shrapnel slicing horrendous gashes through their  faces.  But it is not just that relentless bombing of a people rounded up like cattle—it is the young boys ripped away from their families for minor infractions like throwing stones at occupying soldiers, with no due process, then raped and brutalized in military prisons.  

This has been going on for decades and is openly celebrated by the perpetrators.  The United States government enthusiastically supports an ongoing ethic cleansing twice as brazen as the Holocaust.

The sad part is that many reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about, aren’t able to refute a single claim I’ve made, and will choose denial.  Those terrorists had it coming, they’ll convince themselves, as the next child is blow to bits as illegal settlers watch eagerly from the hills overlooking the carnage.  They literally do boat tours off the coast to pick what part of the annexed land they will take.  This is depravity on a whole different level, yet our propaganda blinded morons will say it is 100% morally justified because “God’s people” or October 7th.

A Century of Aggression, Conflict and Terror

The biggest propaganda lie is to say that a conflict began after the other side hit back or escalated.  The fight between the settlers from Europe and people native to Palestine didn’t start on October 7th.  Quibble over the semantic details, but there were inhabitants on the land pushed off through a campaign of terror and abuse, here’s a brief historical timeline provided by Grok:

1882 – First Aliyah Begins: The First Aliyah marks the start of organized Zionist immigration to Ottoman Palestine, driven by European Jewish nationalists seeking a homeland. About 25,000–35,000 Jews arrive between 1882 and 1903, often buying land from absentee Ottoman landlords. Palestinians, the indigenous Arab population (Muslim, Christian, and Druze), number around 500,000 and live as farmers, urban dwellers, and Bedouins under Ottoman rule. These early settlers, motivated by Theodor Herzl’s Zionist vision (articulated later in 1896), begin displacing Palestinian tenant farmers, though violence remains sporadic at this stage.

November 2, 1917 – Balfour Declaration: The British government issues the Balfour Declaration, promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This galvanizes Zionist settlement, with immigrants arriving under British protection post-World War I. Palestinians, still a majority (over 90% of the population), oppose this as it threatens their land and self-determination. No major Zionist terror acts occur yet, but tensions rise as settlers establish armed militias like Hashomer to guard settlements, clashing with locals.

April 4–7, 1920 – Nebi Musa Riots: Violence erupts in Jerusalem as Palestinians protest Zionist immigration and British policy. Jewish settlers, supported by early Zionist self-defense groups, clash with Arabs, leaving 9 dead (5 Jews, 4 Arabs) and over 200 injured. This marks an early escalation, though not yet a coordinated Zionist terror campaign. Palestinians are defending their homeland; settlers are a growing minority (around 60,000 by 1920) asserting claims to the land.

May 1–7, 1921 – Jaffa Riots: Anti-Zionist unrest in Jaffa results in 47 Jews and 48 Arabs killed, with hundreds injured. Zionist settlers, now numbering about 85,000, retaliate with armed groups like the Haganah (formed 1920), targeting Palestinian communities. Palestinians, still indigenous and resisting displacement, face increasing settler militancy. These riots signal the start of organized Zionist violence, though not yet classified as terrorism.

August 23–29, 1929 – Palestine Riots: Widespread clashes over Jerusalem’s holy sites kill 133 Jews and 116 Arabs. Zionist settlers, bolstered by Haganah, fight back against Palestinian attacks on Jewish communities. The violence reflects growing settler presence (around 156,000 Jews) and Palestinian fears of losing control. While mutual, this period sees Zionist groups refining their armed capabilities, laying groundwork for later terror tactics.

1935 – Irgun Splits from Haganah: The Irgun, a Revisionist Zionist militia led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s ideology (“only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state”), breaks from the more moderate Haganah. Settlers now number over 300,000, aggressively expanding. Palestinians, still a majority (around 850,000), face intensifying land loss. Irgun begins targeting British and Arab civilians, marking the onset of a deliberate Zionist terror campaign.

April 1936–1939 – Arab Revolt: Palestinians launch a revolt against British rule and Zionist immigration, killing around 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British. Irgun escalates terror, bombing Arab markets (e.g., July 6, 1938, in Haifa, killing 18) and buses (August–September 1937). Settlers, now a militarized minority, aim to secure land; Palestinians fight to preserve their homeland. Atrocities include Irgun’s reprisal killings of civilians.

July 22, 1946 – King David Hotel Bombing: Irgun bombs the British administrative headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 91 (British, Arab, and Jewish). This high-profile attack, led by Menachem Begin, targets Mandate authorities to force withdrawal and enable Zionist statehood. Settlers (around 600,000) are a significant force; Palestinians (over 1.2 million) face displacement as Zionist militias grow bolder.

November 29, 1947 – UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181): The UN votes to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Zionist settlers (about 630,000) accept it; Palestinians (1.3 million) reject it, fearing loss of 55% of their land despite being 67% of the population. Civil war erupts, with Zionist terror intensifying—Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi launch attacks on Palestinian villages.

December 1947–May 1948 – Pre-Nakba Atrocities: Zionist militias begin ethnic cleansing before Israel’s founding. On December 18, 1947, Irgun bombs Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, killing 20 Arabs. By April 9, 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre sees Irgun and Lehi kill over 100 Palestinian villagers, including women and children, sparking mass flight. Settlers aim to clear land; Palestinians, indigenous and defenseless, lose over 300,000 people to exile before Arab armies intervene.

May 14, 1948 – Israel Declares Independence (Nakba Begins): Israel is established, and the Nakba (“catastrophe”) sees Zionist forces expel 750,000 Palestinians, destroying 530 villages. Atrocities like the Tantura massacre (May 22–23, 1948, over 200 killed) exemplify the campaign. Settlers become citizens of Israel (population 806,000, 82% Jewish); Palestinians, reduced to 150,000 within Israel, face further displacement as refugees.

July 25, 1947 – Sergeants Affair: Irgun kidnaps and hangs two British sergeants in retaliation for death sentences on its members, booby-trapping their bodies. This terror act pressures Britain to exit. Settlers solidify control; Palestinians suffer escalating violence as Zionist goals near fruition.

June 5–10, 1967 – Six-Day War: Israel launches a preemptive strike on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, occupying the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Settlers expand into these territories (e.g., Kfar Etzion reestablished in 1967); Palestinians (around 1 million in occupied areas) endure military rule and land seizures, with 280,000–360,000 more displaced.

1987–1993 – First Intifada: Palestinians in occupied territories revolt against Israeli rule, met with settler violence and IDF repression (160 Israelis, 2,162 Palestinians killed). Settlers, now numbering over 100,000 in the West Bank, attack Palestinian communities, often with impunity. This period highlights ongoing settler-Palestinian conflict.

September 28, 2000–2005 – Second Intifada: A more violent uprising sees 1,000 Israelis and 4,000 Palestinians killed. Settler extremists and IDF target Palestinian civilians; settlers (over 200,000 in West Bank) expand outposts, intensifying land theft. Palestinians resist occupation, facing collective punishment.

The Zionists did not hide their Holocaust and they never abandoned their national roots in terror either.  The Irgun and other settler militias (terrorist organizations) were integrated into the new Israeli government and never held accountable.  Anywhere else in the world Americans would be funding the “freedom fighters” trying to fight off the invasion and later the yoke of occupation and oppression—but, in this case, AIPAC spends millions upon millions every year to buy the support (or just the silence) of US politicians.

The American public is propagandized and Evangelicals shoveled under a pile of what amounts to theological manure to remain blinded to one side of the atrocities being committed.  If your answer to any question of what the IDF does to Palestinians is “but Hamas” then you are anti-Christ.  Jesus did not teach an eye for an eye, certainly not ten of their eyes plus the lives of their children, and instead taught to turn the other cheek and love our enemies.  If you condone (let alone celebrate) the calculated murder of children then you have entirely destroyed your own Christian witness.

There is no morality when morality changes depending on who is doing it.  If it is wrong for Hamas fighters to escape their open air prison (equivalent to concentration camps or Warsaw ghetto) to take Israeli hostages to barter for the return of their own, then it is most certainly wrong for the IDF to bomb knowing they will likely kill up to 15 civilians for one Hamas fighter.  And do not feed me this “they hide behind women and children” bullshit excuse.  Zionism hides behind the Holocaust rather than own up to the long list of atrocities committed in the name of a Jewish homeland.

The first Holocaust doesn’t justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza or current massacre with spectators.  The IDF is not at war, in war you don’t have boat tours or field trips to watch—they are bombing fish in a barrel and then playing victim.  

This clever framing of perpetual victimhood, even while they are doing worse than those they call terrorists, may work for those who are indoctrinated into Zionism or ignorant—buy it does not work for a consistent moral standard.  

It is a “rules for thee, not for me” scenario where anything Israel does is blessed and anything the Palestinians do is a terrible act of terrorism.  Zionists can steal land, kill or rape the rightful owners, but then be upset when the Palestinians finally caught on and started copying their terrorism.  I mean, if it worked for Irgun—why not Hamas?

No More Holocaust In OUR Name!

A favorite tactic of apologists for Zionism is to deflect from current IDF atrocities to ask why equal time isn’t spent condemning the other side.  But we are not funding Hamas, we are not providing them with military aid, and I am not making a mockery of my faith by claiming that God gives those who deny his son special exemption to kill for land.  If God is on their side then they don’t my tax dollars to fight their fight.  America-first only works when you end foreign entanglements and make no exceptions.  We don’t need to invade Israel to stop them, we simply need to stop feeding their war machine.  I’m not responsible for Hamas—but my money is going to continue a genocide and therefore I will make my stance clear: No more baby murder in my name!

When Aaron Bushnell stood before the Israeli Embassy on February 25, 2024, and set himself ablaze, he didn’t just die—he screamed a truth too many ignore: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide.” His final words echo the resignations of principled State Department officials like Josh Paul, who quit back in October 2023, declaring, “I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions… that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust.” Or Annelle Sheline, who left in March 2024, unable to serve under the Biden administration “that enables the atrocities in Gaza.” These true Americans—soldiers, diplomats—saw the blood on our hands and courageously they chose conscience over career.   

They saw what American Zionists choose to ignore.  The footage emerged of a 10-year-old, Ahmed, burned alive in December 2024 when an IDF airstrike hit a tent camp in Deir al-Balah. His screams, captured on a bystander’s phone, cut through the lies and propaganda: a boy, not a fighter, reduced to ash as the settlers watched from the gallery eager to personally gain from the slaughter of babies.  You can’t be pro-life and be okay with this.  You can’t represent Christ while being an apologist for murder.

We’re not funding Hamas. We’re bankrolling a machine that burns children alive, rapes boys (old as my son) in detention, and calls this defense. 

Bushnell saw it. 

Paul saw it. 

Sheline saw it. 

They acted. 

Will we? 

Or will we keep decorating the graves of the righteous, and pretend that our silence isn’t complicity? 

I posted pictures because we must stop this—in the name of Jesus it must stop!

I Feel Bad For The Shooter On The Roof

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It was inevitable.

Trump, who packs rallies despite somehow losing the last election, took the stage again in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Nearby another man crawls on a roof top, a rifle in his hands, takes aim and he pulls the trigger.  He missed his mark, but continues to fire, one bullet fired striking a person in the crowd, killing them instantly, another hit the former President who drops.

Thomas Matthew Crook was only 20-years-old.  His entire life he has been propagandized by a partisan media blinded by rage.  After the dismal debate performance of Joe Biden, a heroic old man fighting till his last breath for the good of the country he loved, great fear gripped this young man.  The evil Drumfler would ascend to power again!

And this time, as the headlines screamed in warning and even Biden himself claimed in the debate, Trump would be out for revenge—which would lead to a literal bloodbath.

Worse yet, the justice system that a month back would never make an error in regards to charges against Trump, suddenly gave way to a Supreme Court that wants Trump to be a dictator!  This gullible young mind absorbed the hysteria.

Voting would not be enough!

No, Crook wasn’t going to leave the future of the nation in the hands of fate.  Women depended on him.  Black people too.  Gays and lesbians as well.  The time for talk was over, Trump and his MAGAt minions needed to be stopped and he was prepared to lay down his life for the good of his country to put an end to this threat.  If the courts could not stop Trump, if Biden couldn’t, then the only option left was a rifle.

If only someone could have talked some sense into him.  If only he had gone outside the ‘mainstream’ corporate news bubble or considered other possibilities.  

Had he done this he would’ve have learned Trump is liberal, a New York businessman with an immigrant mother and married to a foreign born wife, who (despite gesturing to Evangelicals) has the morals of Bill Clinton and is therefore not remotely interested in implementing the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 25” conservative fever dream.

Trump is actually a disappointment to the right-wing, he banned bump stops and has a centrist platform when you stop taking the Democrat claims as fact or the full truth.  It isn’t like he’s going to bring back slavery or force women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.  He’s a fiscal conservative who supports bringing manufacturing jobs back and likes trolling on social media.  That’s it.  He’s not a fascist.  He won’t ban abortion (which he says should be up to states) nor is he any more evil than those who falsely accuse him for their own gain.

Crook came within millimeters of his target, which is quite impressive for 150 meters, but will be remembered as a brainwashed fool who mistook rhetoric for reality. 

He may have actually secured a second term for Trump when most people take a step back and realize that the extremists might be on the side of the leftist media—that initially had responded to the assassination attempt by playing it off as popping noises and Trump falling down. 

Reprehensible misreporting!

It is time to start seeing through this nonsense.

If Trump were literally Hitler, the President Biden would not have come out against the shooter.  No, he would’ve lamented the bad aim and reiterated the bullseye statement he made just days ago.  Instead he is now pulling ads and admitting that the show has gone too far after his opponent was nearly killed.  Ironically, for a brief moment, Biden has looked very presidential.

Too bad Crook didn’t realize that he was a pawn in a manipulation game before he executed on the plan.

Responsible people failed him.

He died for nothing. 

WhY dOn’T tHeY jUsT…?!?

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It is 2064 and refugees from Spanish-speaking countries nearly match the native-born American population in border states.  The United States, after fighting war after war and finally collapsing economically, is a shadow of the globe-spanning power it once was.  A militant ethno-nationalist contingent within this group of new arrivals, armed with their own understanding of history, believes that the American West rightfully belongs to them.  And using a campaign of terror and intimidation, after a few skirmishes, have driven even many native Texans out of their most notable cities. 

La Raza (or ‘the race’) is not satisfied to only have parts of the historically Spanish parts of the continental US.  However, the new UN based in Dubai, while agreeing that the Spanish had a better claim, determined that a two-state solution was best and drew the map for a partition plan.  Of course, neither side is truly satisfied with this and both are merely buying time.  A coalition of sympathetic American states formed to help the Texas Rangers, which is now a paramilitary organization of mostly fundamentalist Christians, but the partisans of the Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida strike first.  Many Texans flee as cartels and Chinese-backed militants start a campaign to push them out.

Decades pass and the Spanish state increases its zone of control.  The Texans continue to fight asymmetrically but have lost control of their resources and are also politically destabilized by their better-funded rivals.  MTGA, or Make Texas Great Again, an extremist group that states a goal of removing all non-Americans from Texas, is secretly aided by La Raza who seeks to undermine the more representative and moderate Texas Rangers.  Why?  Well, with their end goal of taking all of what was Spanish territory, they really did not want a successful state of Texas, they wanted exploitable chaos and opportunities to seize more land using self-defense as an excuse.

After a small success, where the MTGA ‘terrorists’ managed to break through the formidable La Raza borders (ironic, given that generations of Americans were told that borders are racist), the enraged Spanish demand that Texan civilians evacuate and begin to bomb the Texas panhandle camps where the remaining resistance fighters base their operations.  Across the Spanish world their own language media, sympathetic to the Spanish cause, ask many questions.  Why do the Texans not overthrow the terrorists?  Why don’t they simply move to other US states and give the land back to the rightful owners from the South?  Why do the border states oppose the relocation of Texans so much when they’re all Americans?

Of course, the scenario above, for the time being, remains fictional, but it is also an analogy to introduce this post which deals with similar questions as to why Gazans do not overthrow Hamas or leave for other Arab lands.  I realize some, even if they don’t admit it, see the people of Gaza as being subhuman, a race marked for destruction or “Amelek” (as Israeli right-wingers call them), and won’t even attempt to understand their perspective.  The propagandists have done their job well, once again, and convinced the masses that the side they are told to oppose is a bunch of savages who can’t be reasoned with and whose blood—including their own children—is on their own hands.

WhY DoN’t ThEy JuSt OvEr-ThRoW hAmAs?!?

Many do not draw a distinction between Hamas and Palestinians.  This is what those who want a blank check to do whatever they want to Gaza want.  If you can make all in this small territory collectively guilty, then you don’t need to deal with the moral dilemma of whether it is okay to kill innocents as a response to innocents being killed.  If all Palestinians are terrorists then you can just treat them like a termite infestation.  It isn’t genocide, it is just pest control!  No, they won’t come out and say that.  However, be honest here, when you drop bombs on a populated city that is exactly what is happening, it is collective punishment and a war crime.

Anyhow, what they don’t tell you is that only a fraction of Palestinians voted for Hamas.  In fact, in no single district of Gaza did Hamas win the majority of votes.  For all of you who want a third-party ballot choice, there’s your warning.  And once you give power to a group like Hamas don’t expect to ever get it back without a fight.  

Propaganda Parrot: “Bu-but, what about all those Gazans out cheering when Hamas attacked Israel?!?”

Me: “What about it???”

Thousands of Americans took to the streets to chant “Not my President!” when Trump won.   And thousands of Americans participated in the Jan 6th ‘insurrection’ as well.  In neither case did the protestors in the crowd, even if millions of them, represent the plurality of Americans.  Furthermore, being in the crowd doesn’t make you a supporter of whatever others have attributed to your cause.  If you are pro-MAGA, contrary to what the Democrat-controlled media says, you aren’t sympathetic to a coup for being upset about the election and subsequent prosecutions.  No, you’re rejecting their framing of the event and beholden to an entirely different narrative.

The same is true of Gazans.  Maybe they don’t support the means of Hamas.  But they certainly understand the grievance and see Israel as an oppressor of their people.  Many Americans would be happy to see Moscow or Tehran leveled.  Does that make them one and the same as those giving the order or carrying it out?

But more significant than that, half of the population of Gaza is children.  They didn’t get a vote nor do they have the ability to go toe to toe with a group currently giving the IDF a run for their money.  Why don’t the Gazans overthrow Hamas?  Maybe for the same reason that those of us who disagree with the waste of our tax dollars and endless wars don’t overthrow the US government:  We want to live our lives.  We don’t want to be killed or end up locked up.  People do not rise up even against a regime that abuses them simply because they don’t want to die.  I mean, come on, do you really expect civilian Palestinian mothers and fathers to take down Israel’s enemy for them?  Do you expect children to overthrow armed men?

Are you really that dull?

Okay then…

WhY dOn’T tHeY jUsT LeAve GaZa?!?

Wow, you’re smart!  Why don’t a million people just follow the IDF command to leave everything behind so that their homes and communities can be leveled without concern for civilian casualties?  I mean, we would all do that at the snap of a finger, right?

This is the biggest bullshit line of all of them.  

State War Crime Apologist: “We gave them an opportunity to leave…”

As if this makes them not responsible for the bloodbath that follows.  I mean, by that reasoning, if they had an opportunity to leave, then the atrocities that followed during the Pogroms are on those who didn’t immediately flee, right?

This is just not a realistic expectation and most especially given the very recent history of the Palestinian people.  First, many who live in the Gaza Strip are already refugees living in camps.  Why?  Well, they were forcibly expelled by Zionists in events like the Nakba of 1948 and many others, these massacres to push them out may have been forgotten by us, but what if that was your grandparents who still remember the olive groves they tended and the good life that they had prior?  Now you have a place, even if it isn’t the greatest, you have friends and neighbors around you, are you going to just march into the desert again so that more of your ancestral land can be annexed?

This is stupider than expecting Texans to up and leave for Canada if they don’t like the current border situation.

If Palestinians leave who will ensure that they are allowed to return?

The UN?!?

Of all people, white Americans who decry foreigners entering their country, and threatening their culture, should understand this.  If we can’t even tolerate sharing our land and so fear losing our national identity, imagine if we had been backed in a corner for decades and are now being told we must evacuate to a new place so that our rivals can do their mop up of the American resistance.  

No, Palestinians don’t leave for the same reason we wouldn’t leave and the same reason why Israelis don’t simply move to friendlier Western nations.  I mean, it would be much easier for Israelis, many of whom are wealthier and have dual citizenship, to make the move to safer places.  Why not just move completely out of range of Hamas rockets and incursions?

You don’t have to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to see this as an injustice, you just need to be human.

As ignorant is this idea that Arab nations should simply absorb the people displaced by Israel as if that would solve the problem.  I mean, it isn’t like hard-core Zionists don’t also think that Lebanon belongs to them.  Unlike many Americans, Arab leaders aren’t dumb.  They know that in politics when you give an inch they’ll take a mile.  Their own rule is fragile enough.  They understand that a stream of refugees will potentially undermine their stability and, again, we should understand this by looking at what is happening in Europe or the US where refugees are welcomed.  And, sure, the US certainly could’ve moved all from the British Isles across the Atlantic to avoid confrontation with Hitler, but why would we?

Why should Gazans leave?  Why should Arab leaders facilitate the whims of Israel?

Blame-shifting Is Evil

Abusers always make the victim guilty.  The little girl he assaulted should’ve been wearing that dress.  This is how they wash their own hands, so they aren’t the bad guys in the narrative they create for themselves.  In their mind, they’re not a bad person, they were just presented with an irresistible temptation, and it was a failure somewhere else that caused them to fall.  Sexual predators do say things like “why did her parents leave her with me” or “he didn’t put up enough resistance” as a justification.  It is evil when they do it and it is evil when others do it in murkier circumstances.

The blood of Gazans, who are killed by the IDF, is completely on the hands of the Israeli leadership who are ordering the invasion.  It is no different from Hamas being to blame for those who were shot by their militants.  Gazans are not collectively guilty of what Hamas does and, likewise, innocent Israelis have no blame to bear for what their government does.  If an enemy uses “human shields” that doesn’t give a military permission to gun down or bomb the civilians between them and their enemies.  If a military invasion is not possible under those conditions, then find another solution.

Israel doesn’t need to invade Gaza to neutralize Hamas.  Even Israelis see the incursion as a failure of their government.  And doing more to defuse the legitimate grievance of the Palestinians, who are having their land systemically taken by religious extremists who cite texts thousands of years old, would go a long way to helping them move on.  Turning enemies into unthinking inhuman monsters is exactly what has enabled genocidal purges in the past and is what is most concerning about the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of Zionists.  It is not Christian.  It is not excusable.

The propagandist’s job isn’t to placate critical thinkers. No, it is to feed the confirmation bias of those who have already picked a side or keep those on the sidelines indifferent. One way this is done is by answering legitimate concerns with plausible, yet spurious, excuses for why normal human compassion need not apply to this situation. It is basic blame-shifting, where you make the victims of abuse guilty for what others are doing to them. And, as gullible and eager as they are, it really doesn’t take much to keep a ‘Christian’ Zionist spouting talking points.

We need to think long and hard about the precedents set by Gaza given our own diminishing influence.  Islamic no-go zones in Europe have expanded to include large swaths of urban centers.  Refugees from destabilized regions of Africa and the Middle East have flowed in, unabated, while native populations have dwindled.  Will we go quietly when it is our turn to be displaced?  Will we like it when our own ethics are turned against us?  Hopefully whoever will rule after us has more compassion and mercy than we do.  Pray that they do not dismiss our cries for justice or brand us as terrorists to be destroyed for opposing their unjust edicts.

It is disheartening that so many in the West have an understanding of the problem less sophisticated than a French aristocrat musing, in response to the starving people saying they don’t have enough bread, “Let them eat cake!” It’s out of touch. It is cruel and indifferent. It will come back to bite us when the world starts to hold us responsible for the abuses of those who claim to act on our behalf and have slaughtered millions. Who will stand to defend us?

Will the Real Quacks Please Stand Up!

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I’ve never been much of a fan of alternative medicine and those peddling their cure-all treatments.  For one, their typical pitch being an attack an the profits of conventional medicine is actually a red flag about their own motives. 

And, secondly, testimonials (or anecdotes) are fabulously awful evidence.  A person can say anything they want or attribute their current positive feelings to whatever, but it doesn’t mean their A led to B assessment is actually correct. 

Unless there is concrete evidence, I dismiss the alternative quacks.  Sorry, I simply do not want to take or sell your mystery juice.  It is disturbing that so many can’t see through this kind of nonsense.

But what is far more disturbing?  

When the mainstream starts to resemble these frauds.  

Yes, it is obvious that modern medicine works.  My successful neck surgery as proof of this.  There were measurable results nearly overnight, almost immediate relief to pain and the numbness.  The whole process was very straightforward.  However, that was a cut and dried form of treatment.  In that they took the old broken stuff out, put some new hardware in, and gave my pinched nerves a chance to heal.  

And yet, while it is amazing what can be done, not everything in our human biology is as simple as disks and vertebrae. 

Indeed, there is a murkier side to modern medicine, things that aren’t 100% clear even after many years of study, having to do with the more complex parts of our physiology and how these systems interact, and this is something that must be explored.  More than that, however, our own psychology, tendencies towards bias, could be leading the collective enterprise in the wrong direction.

#1) Money Money Everywhere 

The first stop is profit motive.  If I don’t mention this then someone else will.  It is the low hanging fruit in this discussion and certainly a factor.  People need paid, and medical professionals get paid for treating disease.  Healthcare is a 4.1 trillion dollar industry in the US and pharmaceuticals are a significant part of that overall cost.  Does this mean that the medical establishment wants to keep us sick and dependent?

Public health officials and regulatory bodies are, indeed, potentially compromised by this opportunity to cash in.  Top US physician, Dr. Anthony Fauci had received undisclosed royalties, part of the $350 million paid by third-parties to NIH and scientists employed by this agency.  No, this isn’t itself proof of corruption, people should get paid for their contributions and lobbyists may very well believe in what they’re promoting.  But there is the reality that money can overrule ethics and potentially cause people to turn a blind eye to problems.

Still, this is not my go-to explanation and for the simple reason that this accusation could be made against any for-profit enterprise.  I work for a truss manufacturing company and we do profit off of fire jobs and wind damage.  Does that mean we intentionally set fires or build an inferior product so it fails every ten years?  Absolutely not!  To make such a claim is, again, more an indication of the heart of the person making it and not proof of anything unless there’s clear evidence.

#2) Testing 1, 2…Good Enough…

Testing and peer-review is also one of those areas of concern as well.  And not because there is nefarious intent either.  But more a matter of scope or methodologies. 

My neck surgeon, for example, opted out of being a participant in a study involving a new line of disk replacement hardware because it was comparing it to a far inferior older product rather than newer better products already available.  In other words, it was a stacked deck or research that is designed to lead to a particular conclusion.

That’s the big problem I have with these broad often unqualified “safe and effective” claims.  It begs the question: Compared to what?  Bungee jumping?  A placebo? 

Most people, including physicians and scientists, simply do not have the time to be experts at everything.  The body is incredibly complex and nobody can actually do their own scientific research for every issue.  For that reason those in the medical field must, as a matter of practicality, rely on diagnostic manuals for treatment and various journals to stay on top of things.  Coloring outside the lines, challenging powerful government agencies, doing unproven or experimental treatments, is a risk of their license or a malpractice lawsuit and ill-advised.  There is an inherent need for those employed in these fields to trust the system and accept what other professionals do. 

If not this, if  their training and education, what else are they going to rely on?

I don’t expect those employed in the medical industry to doubt the very foundation that they stand on. 

Unfortunately, this reality is what makes their consensus useless.  Sure, they might know much more than the average person about the science.  Still, are they up all night, in the laboratory, carefully repeating the results of the latest studies themselves?  No, when other experts in related fields endorse what another expert is saying it is merely a sign of statement of their faith—that being their faith in the overall system.  

But it seems every other week a study comes out that seems to contradict prior findings.  Most of this is due to how limited the focus of research actually is.  They can’t possibly test every variable and especially not in a very short amount of time.  This reality, of finite resources, is a legitimate cause for healthy skepticism and abundance of caution.  The problem is that most people, including those well-educated, don’t have great critical thinking skills or even the ability to know the right questions to ask—it is far easier to “trust the experts” and go with the program.

#3) Confirmation Bias Is Always a Problem 

The problem with research is that we often go in looking for a particular result.  Sure, a double blind study is designed to reduce this as a factor.  However, the underlying bias can show up as far as what gets tested and what does not.  It can also be a factor in how we interpret the data available.  Group think and echo chambers, things like functional fixedness, are as much (or more) a problem with those very knowledgeable as it is with anyone else.

One example of this is how “effective” kept getting redefined down.  What once was supposed to prevent the disease and stop the spread would shift, overnight, to being a way to merely lessen the severity of the symptoms.  Which is a foundation so subjective and shaky that it is basically in the same category of the testimonials used by snake oil salesmen.  It is another area where the studies aren’t as conclusive as many would assume.  And, at the very least, correlation does not equal causation.  In other words, the vaccines could simply be acting as a placebo for those who believe that they are effective. 

Moving the goal posts, a sign the science isn’t as settled as stated.

What is not taken into proper account is how these perceived benefits, that are shrinking day by day, weigh against both short and long-term risks. 

For example, someone very dear to me, fully vaccinated, boosted, is currently suffering from a persistent respiratory illness, starting a month or so ago, and now is having flu-like symptoms again.  Could this be this is a result of an immunosuppressant effect of the injection?  It sure does appear that way and would be worthy of a study of the things presumed to be unrelated to the vaccines that very well may be related.  There is only a trickle of information coming out, discussion of side-effects buried in the search results and censored on social media.

What is most unsettling is the reality that our mainstream medical establishment is as prone to confirmation bias as those pushing alternatives.  They see what they want to see in the evidence and dismiss or downplay anything that contradicts what they were expecting to see.  The biggest difference is that it is more convoluted than it is with the obvious quacks, whole institutions get on board with a solution and too often it just gets cycled through, reinforced in each cycle, without enough awareness of the potential failure due to the blinders we all wear.

#4) Political Bias Is Endemic

One of the most troubling revelations of the past few years was how awfully politicized the coverage of a pandemic was. Anyone who thought that partisan differences would disappear in times of a national crisis was dead wrong.  If anything it is what likely drove much of the response.  At first leading to charges of racism (for travel restrictions from the virus epicenter) and accusations of over-hyping the threat of Covid—before swinging wildly in the other direction with onerous state-level mandates that destroyed great economy on the eve of a national election.

But one of the most disturbing episodes (and disgusting) is how proven medications, like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, were treated as if they were especially dangerous and controversial simply because the ‘wrong’ person mentioned their potential as being a treatment option.  It is truly a great way of explaining how propaganda works.  The partisan media would pick the most extreme case of an overdose, ridicule a proven multi-use medicine as “horse dewormer” despite the many uses, and then misleadingly ‘fact-check’ the technicalities of language.

I mean, sure, these proven medications do not “cure” the disease.  But they are most certainly treatments that are effective for preventing severe symptoms if taken prior to the infection taking hold.  This is why several older doctors that I know (whom I will not mention by name for their protection) were quietly stockpiling these much maligned substances.  They didn’t dare speak too loudly either or they would be risk their own medical licenses for promoting unproven cures or some other nonsense.  Bullying and peer-pressure is as real for a professional as it is for anyone else.

This, along with other much more expensive (and profitable) treatments being pushed, is fodder for the conspiracy theory crowd and for good reason.  For me it disproves any notion that the system we rely on, including the medical establishment, is impartial or fair.  Sure, I’m glad that The Lancet, a trusted medical journal, eventually retracted a study that falsely claimed that hydroxychloroquine led to death for some Covid patients (as they have with another study linking vaccines to autism) and yet the damage was already done.

#5) Lost in Oversimplification 

One of the harder or more difficult problems to explain is how the common models of are often too dumbed down to be accurate.  

Up until recently depression was explained as being “chemical imbalances in the brain” and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) the solution.  This overly simplistic explanation has been called into question and this is a cause of alarm for those told to “trust the science” when it comes to the professionally prescribed answers.

I love metaphor and analogy to explain things less visible or intuitive.  However, if these tools are misunderstood as being exactly the same as the thing being described this can lead to very wrong conclusions. 

Just like a ball and stick model of atoms is useful yet doesn’t truly explain the reality (an electron is more cloud of probabilities), the various illusions used to sell parts of the pandemic response are as flawed.

The description is not the same as the real thing.

Sure, the theory of “flattening the curve” is great on a graph, and swiss cheese makes a very compelling illustration of how a multi-faceted approach could work, in theory, but both give a false impression of being complete or unquestionable. 

But is this theory working in reality?

Of course, how diseases spread in the real world is different from the even the best models and it is quite possible that slowing the spread only makes things worse, as is the case with attempts to manage forest fires. In that effort to control can eventually lead to much more devastating fires. Slowing down the process could result in a scenario where the burn is thorough, everything gets consumed, rather than the alternative of a fire that moves quickly and skips over areas.  The point being that analogies don’t account for the nuances and could lead to the wrong ideas taking hold in the public imagination.

No, this is not to claim that I have a better grasp of virology than those who have studied these things their entire lives.  It is only to say that these illustrations give too many undue confidence.  There are many factors that these crude analogies gloss over and factors that could vastly change the final outcomes.  The problem is that many are unable to see the more complex picture as a result of these elementary level descriptions that are used to sell a particular approach.

It makes us unbalanced.

In Conclusion…

There is no individual that can provide an opinion that is completely infallible nor any agency that is able to offer a perspective free blindspots or bias. 

Our “settled science” today make seem as bloodletting in a generation or two.  And the same kind of thinking that leads crackpots to their ‘alternatives’ is also all too present in the mainstream.  There is always the money motive, with the lack of adequate testing, the confirmation bias, the influence political agenda and faulty or misleading explanation, all tainting both the perception of the general public and professional opinion.  The biggest difference between those who believe the quacks and those who insist that the vaccine is effective is the level of funding behind their perspectives.

This doesn’t put the outliers and mainstream on equal footing, there is such thing as strength in numbers, yet what is popular is sometimes only a product of propaganda and common ignorance. 

Don’t be so sure that the things being ridiculed in the current paradigm are any different from what is being promoted.  We know less than many think we know.  There may be future studies or new discoveries that will completely upended the too hasty conclusions of our time. 

No matter how confident we are in our own position or settled we believe a topic is, it is always best to stay humble.

Words and Wars — Why Musk Terrifies the Establishment

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Some of us are old enough to remember the playground taunt, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  That denial of the power of words, of course, was merely to disempower a bully and quite a bit more effective than crying for mommy in most circumstances.

In this age of online censorship and newly invented categories of offense, it is difficult to even claim that words have absolutely no impact on us.  Being called a “racist” or “domestic terrorist” does matter, it can come with serious social consequences and be used as a pretext for punishment of political opponents.  No laughing matter.

We are governed by words.  If we see a red sign emblazoned with the letters S-T-O-P, we tend to comply (at least partially) without much thought.  And, whether you want to comply or not, because of written laws, you’ll end up giving the IRS a significant portion of your income.  Words can and do hurt your wallet, they limit opportunity and shape outcomes.

We are steered, employed by others to their own ends, by use of description, framing and narratives.  For example, whether a deadly conflict is described as being a “military intervention” (Yemen) or as an “invasion” and “aggression” (Ukraine) has little to do with substantive difference and everything to do with how propagandists wish us to perceive the event. 

Context provided, what is or is not reported, changes the moral equation.  

Those who control social media platforms understand the power of words.  They know that awareness is induced through language and that narrative matters.  This is why they have taken such interest in curtailing speech and the dissemination of information.  Even if corrupted by partisanship, many of them likely see this as their responsibility or a moral obligation.

Unfortunately, regardless of intent, these self-appointed gatekeepers failed.  The same people who routinely “fact-check” hyperbole and satire, even banned people for suspecting the lab origin of the pandemic, have yet to identify the Russian collision narrative as false.  The most egregious act was Twitter using bogus reasons to suspend the account of the New York Post for their sharing the Biden laptop bombshell on the eve of the 2020 Presidential vote. Talk about election interference!

Elon Musk’s announcement of his ownership of a significant stake in Twitter and then subsequent buyout of the far-left’s favorite social media has shook up the political establishment.  Elizabeth Warren, a powerful US Senator, who leveraged a fiction about her Native American heritage to attain her own privileged position, somehow worth $67 million herself, had this to say:

Strange how now she speaks up about potential “dangerous to democracy,” but not when Big Tech was using the pretense of their “community standards” to ban content creators, including a former President, for challenging their ideological agenda and narratives.  Sure, they always could conjure their excuses or hide behind “Twitter is a private business, if you don’t like it start your own internet,” disingenuously while suing individuals who defied their demands, but now the truth comes out, suddenly it is all about democracy:

Credentialism much? I guess we should trust the privileged elites who trust the corporate system instead?

To those of us who have faced algorithmic demotion and punitive measures for our wrong-think, doing things like posting the actual flag of Ukraine’s Azov battalion or a quote of Hitler praising censorship intended as ironic, there is appreciation for Musk as a free speech advocate.  To those who use the word “democracy” as an excuse to trample rights, this represents an enormous threat to the ability to control narrative.

For those of us who have been paying close attention and involved, we know why Yahoo News, along with other far-leftist run online publishers, have shutdown their comment sections.  Sure, they may say this was to prevent misinformation, but the reality is that there would often be factual rebuttals or additional context that would undermine the narrative of the article.  It was always about control, not protection.

The war of words is as important as that which involves tanks, bombs and guns.  It was propaganda and censorship, as much as physical means, that enabled Nazis to put Jews in camps.  This is why Russo-phobia, the demonization and cancelation of a whole ethinic group, over things the the US-led imperial left, is so troubling.  President Obama was not accused of war crimes for a brutal AC-130 attack on an Afghan hospital, despite the dozens of verified casualties, why is that?

It is, of course, how the story is presented that makes all of the difference.  If a writer wants a leader to appear incompetent they might use the words like “bungled” as the description.  If they wish to spin it as positive they’ll say “setbacks” and dwell on framing the cause as righteous instead.  Those who want the public to support one side of the Ukrainian conflict will downplay or even completely ignore important context, like NATO expansion, the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014, and merciless shelling of the Donbass region.

And this is why Musk promising to restore freedom of speech on Twitter is such a big deal and especially to the current power brokers.  The military-industrial complex, which owns the corporate media and many of our politicians, stands to lose billions in revenue if they can’t convince the gullible masses that Vladimir Putin is literally Hitler for leading a US-style “regime change” effort in his own neighborhood.

I mean, how will US political families, like the quid pro quo Biden’s, continue to make their millions in kickbacks (Burisma/Hunter scandal) if Ukrainian’s energy is back under Russian control again?

This is why they’ll fight tooth and nail to keep the presentation of the story as one-sided as possible.  They do not want us to hear the facts that may cause questions.  They only want us to have their prepacked stawman “don’t say gay” version of their enemies, presented by the late-night funnyman for ridicule, rather than allow a truly informed debate. 

Unlike many, the ignorant who accept narratives at face value, the elites with government and corporate power understand that the world is run by ideas.  It is how wars are won.

Do Not Muzzle the Ox or Canadian Truck Drivers

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When a convoy of trucks descended upon Ottawa to protest the imposition of mandates, Justin Trudeau, the ever so prim and polished Canadian Prime Minister, took to the screen to disparage the effort as being a “small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

If that sounds like a school teacher scolding a class of 8th graders, that is because teaching was Trudeau’s former occupation before being elected to office on the basis of his good looks, smooth speech, and all-around nice guy appearance. There is a certain demographic that swooned after this young charismatic figure, despite his far-left disposition.

Of course, what works in the classroom doesn’t necessarily make the best approach for leading a diverse nation. A teacher is an authoritarian, they rule over the children either by their superior knowledge or simply by the hierarchical structure needed to keep order in a school. But that’s not how a liberal democracy with elected representatives is supposed to work.

It is not Trudeau’s job to decide what views are and are not acceptable. And that is the very tone that is starting to provoke a response. People are getting tired of politicians, with no moral authority (see: Trudeau in blackface) or real expertise forcing them to comply and lecturing them about what views are or are not acceptable.

It is fitting that a chaotic sea of truck drivers has risen up to challenge this would-be dictator. Ironically, 90% of the drivers are already in compliance according to Newsweek, and yet they are standing up for their rights as Canadians and saying “enough is enough” after two years of being pushed around by those who have long ago overstepped their mandate to govern.

What Makes A Truck Driver Special?

There is some truth to the idea that truckers are on the fringe. The word “fringe” carries a negative connotation when used in a political context, but is defined generally as “the border or outer edges of an area or group.”

Truckers are strong and independent people who face brutal extremes so that those within the borders of their effort are protected.

Like feminine traits (like compassion and nurturing) are ideal for careers like nursing or teaching, it takes a rugged masculine individual to go out and brave all weather and conditions. Truckers occupy that space between order and disorder. They deal with mud, freezing cold and ice, long hours. They can be out weeks at a time, sleeping in a box behind the cab, living in a solitary space so that everyone else can have their comfortable lives.

It doesn’t matter how you feel when there is work to be done. A trucker’s life is pass or fail. Either you clear the snow off the dump trailer tarp and get loaded or you don’t get home. There is no one to hold your hand, nobody out on the edge in this wilderness cares that you’re offended. You’re on your own, buddy, and better be able to deal with loneliness, make your own decisions, overcome the disorder, and find a way to get moving again.

At the same time, a trucker, a real trucker, is not just a dumb brute holding a steering wheel. They need to understand the machinery that they operate, how to properly secure and balance their loads, how to predict their trip and make their appointment times, many are small business owners and need to keep up with the onerous compliance regime imposed upon them.

Professional truckers are some of the most meticulous and detailed people when it comes to their work and their vehicles. Many spend their free time shining the rims, their weekends doing maintenance work, and are extremely skilled.

One skill truckers have is the ability to think for themselves. They form their own opinions and aren’t going to be pushed around by the popular narratives and certainly not by some coward who will not face them while still collecting a check at taxpayers’ expense.

Meanwhile, truckers go out on the road every week to keep the economy going and support their families, facing adversity on the open road and now in front of the parlament, it is costing them a great amount of money to stand up for freedom.

Which is the true form of a truck driver: They are self-sacrificial.

The Contrast Of Fringe Minorities

Political elites and truck drivers occupy opposite sides of society and only one of them is essential. Truckers could survive, on their own, without Trudeau to lead them and may actually do better without the expense of bloated governments bearing down on their shoulders. The elites, on the other hand, would not be able to live their lifestyle without the workers.

For years, especially the past two, the privileged elites, with their access to political power and ability to broadcast their opinions, have encroached more and more on the freedoms of their fellow citizens. Even before the outbreak of disease they always had a ready excuse why their influence and control should be expanded. They will have us believe that they “follow the science” and represent the expert opinions, that they are more qualified.

And yet, these people at the topmost fringe of the social hierarchy often are far removed from the practical implications of their policies. They may say things like “we’re in this together” and pretend to be one of the people when that is convenient to their ends, yet they never do suffer to the extent that those at the bottom do. In fact, there are many pictures of politicians, who issued strict restrictions, not following their own rules.

It would be one thing if they had faithfully led by example, refused to travel and go out themselves, or at least did not hypocritically attack leaders who allowed freedom while they indulged themselves, but it was always “rules for thee and not for me.” They scared and coerced everyone else into compliance, economically ruinous policies for small businesses while being totally exempted from the pain they inflicted.

The truckers, by contrast, simply did their job, rain or shine, deadly virus or not, delivering the goods that are necessary for civilization to exist. And for this, they are mocked, falsely (and bizarrely) characterized as being racist or sexist for standing up to the rich powerful corporate and state actors. I mean, maybe the media thinks that we don’t see the Sikhs or Native people cheering on and joining their fellow Canadians?

How anyone continues to see these fusspot fakes as being credible is beyond me. But then many are divorced from the harsh realities beyond the safe spaces that others provide for them. Unlike truckers, they are controlled by fear, suffer from a kind of Stockholm syndrome where they believe that those exploiting them (for political or other gains) are their protectors.

The elites are the fringe in Canada. The majority of their countrymen want the restrictions to end and thus, spiritually, are on the side of the truckers rather than Trudeau. Sure, many have been misled by corporate media and mischaracterizations of the trucker convoy by those trying to cast this protest in a negative light. But more are starting to see through the blinders of partisanship and propaganda, they should go meet the friendly truckers.

Do Not Muzzle The Ox

St. Paul, on several occasions, makes reference to Deuteronomy 25:4, the law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” He uses it in the context of being allowed to work for pay and applies it as a general principle. So much for strict literalism and lawyerly application, right?

The ox treading out the grain is used as an analogy of a worker. It is wrong to deny the ox some of the fruit of their labor and it is also wrong to deny a person their fair wages. It makes sense, we should treat those working for our benefit with appreciation and respect.

Sure, a draft animal might not be the smartest creature. But it does deserve what it is due.

And, speaking of muzzles being removed and speaking out against unjust beating, remember the comical story of Balaam’s donkey, where self-important Balaam has a conflict with his transportation. The donkey, seeing an angel with a sword in hand unseen to Balaam, refused to continue down the path and for this suffers abuse. This happens three times before God finally allows the ‘dumb’ animal to speak:

Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?

”Balaam answered the donkey, “You have made a fool of me! If only I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.”

The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?”

“No,” he said.

Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.

(Numbers 22:28-31 NIV)

The hilarious part is that the donkey starts to talk back against the abuse and yet that’s not enough for arrogant Balaam to stop and reconsider.

The donkey, like our trucker friends, reminds his rider that he has been completely reliable up until that point, never complained or caused problems, and was refusing to continue for reasons that his master could not see.

Balaam had spiritual blindness, too caught up in his own dignity, assuming his own superiority to the animal, and was very fortunate to not be killed. The Bible is full of stories about tyrants who refused to listen to the people under their rule and suffered severe consequences.

In a time of mask mandates and slanderous lies against the working class ‘deplorables’ it seems fitting that those of spiritual vision stand up together with the Canadian truck drivers.

May the walls of this modern Jericho come down with the honking of many horns.

[Don’t] Trust The Narrative

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The truth of a story is not proportional to our investment in it.  The Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example, is a movie franchise worth nearly 23 billion dollars and has no basis reality other than locations.  And still, despite being complete fiction, people are obsessed.  We treat the characters as if they’re real, repeat their lines, cosplay to participate in the fantasy, and it does seem that many would rather be lost in this exciting world of make-believe than live their actual lives.

It is really interesting how outside observers of religions (other than their own) have no difficulty dismissing the beliefs and practices.  The claims of L. Ron Hubbard, or Joseph Smith, or Muhammad ibn Abdullah aren’t all that compelling to non-adherents.  I mean, come on, riding through the sky on a horse with a woman’s head and the tail of a peacock sounds more like a crazy acid trip than something to take seriously, right?  But for this raised in an Islamic country, this makes more sense than Trinity or resurrection.

I’m quite certain that the Biblical narrative, whether Genesis or the Gospels, would have been far less believable had I not been indoctrinated as a child.  I mean, it made sense to me then.  My parents and every other respectable adult that I knew held to this belief system.  It would actually be rather strange had I rejected this outright.  It was only later that the vast differences between even various Mennonite sects, and facing challenges to my assumptions, that I even knew how to question.

Of course, this doesn’t make those raised outside of organized religion any more rational.  Secular ideas, like Evolution and Global Warming, have taken on their own narrative framework, similar to religion, that far exceeds the actual evidence.  Not all of the gaps can be explained by Natural Selection.  And climate apocalypticism has strange similarities to the “end times” prophecies common with many caught up in Evangelicalism.  Al Gore is basically Harold Camping with corporate sponsorship.

Most of these narratives can’t be entirely falsified.  The decades and decades of dire predictions from climate alarmists haven’t come true, yet they keep moving the goal posts, even making claims in contradiction to those prior, and the next generation of conscientious young people are none the wiser.  Likewise, the doctrines and practices of traditional religions evolve and get twisted every which way, to the point that you can’t get people raised in the same denomination to agree.  

The strangest thing is how these various movements never die even when their claims are falsified.  For example, the Seventh-day Adventists arose from the false Millerite prophecy that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844.  The date came and went without event.  But, despite this Great Disappointment, some who saw their central claim proven false still regrouped and continued on their way again.  Perhaps the investment made was too much to simply give it up?  

It’s sort of like I don’t expect the “believe science” midwits to ever comprehend how many times the experts get it wrong or reconsider.  They’ll probably go on praising Dr. Fauci as a saint even after the puppy experimentation scandal, even after the NIH now admits to funding of gain-of-function research, and probably because it would cause too much discomfort to consider that their trust may have been misplaced.

It takes a boatload of evidence to overturn these narratives we have built up in our minds.  Bad ideas, like Marxism, even if they fail miserably in one place, are often recycled and reintroduced.  At the same time, credit for plain luck is given to whatever a person wants to have credit.  A boom economy, with the President you voted for, and it is obviously a product of wise leadership, right?  The sun came up right after you prayed?  Must be the grace of God.

All religion, all political ideologies, the trust we have in certain institutions or people, is part of our embracing narratives.  Whether you believe vaccines cause autism or ended Polio depends more on who (or what) you accept as an authority than the actual evidence.  Past narratives might seem irrational to you, like the idea that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms,” yet made complete sense to many influential and intelligent ‘scientific’ people at one time.  Those who go against the currently popular ‘expert’ consensus can expect persecution.

All this to say that we aren’t as good at discerning truth as we imagine.  In many cases what we believe is nearly as much fiction as Captain America fighting against Hydra.  It isn’t just the conspiracy theorist kooks buying into narratives despite evidence to the contrary, we all do, we all believe a blend of religious propaganda, political indoctrination, and out-of-context or unqualified facts stitched together, and much of it as absurd as the narratives we reject.

My Suspicions Confirmed

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I’ll have to concede, I was wrong about face masks.  Early in the pandemic, in January of 2020 while the corporate media ‘experts’ were saying that we should be more concerned about the seasonal flu.  I was worried about this mystery virus in Wuhan and decided to get a box of N95 masks in case my fears were confirmed.  I was ridiculed, at the time, for my warnings and telling people to be prepared.

Months later, as the “no human-to-human transmission” claim of WHO became too obviously false to ignore and the glib urgings of politicians for their constituents to visit China were replaced with terror, that confirmed my warnings.  But now, with mask mandates and recommendations rolling out, many friends began to resist the idea.  They weren’t going to wear a “face diaper” and ridiculed the idea that a bit of cloth would be effective against a virus.

Of course, they were a little right, cloth masks aren’t at all effective against stopping the spread of the virus and now the corporate media is finally conceding this.  But still, based on laboratory experiments and filtration level, I believed my N95 masks were effective.  However, laboratory conditions are not the real world and, eventually, even that became a question mark for me.  Many countries also require facemasks with the masks because the masks are not adequate.

A few weeks ago, I may have overstated, I said that masks were completely ineffective at stopping the spread.  Technically correct since the virus spread as much (or even more) in states with strict requirements and yet I’ve also ran into some convincing data that suggests the good masks, the N95’s with a decent seal, may make an 10% difference overall.  So on this basis I’ll admit there could be marginal benefit.

The Wishy-washy Way To Truth

Many people, once they’ve made up their minds, never reconsider their stance.  If they believe masks are stupid then they will use every excuse in the book not to wear one.  I’ve heard them all.  The fear about being dehumanized.  That breathing carbon dioxide is dangerous.  But then they’ll contradict by calling people who disagree “sheeple” and claiming that something that can stop carbon dioxide from leaving can’t stop a virus from entering, hmm?

This is called confirmation bias.  People are emotionally invested in their ideas.  It is not easy to admit being wrong after making strong statements one way or another. So, rather than be on an unbending quest for the truth, most people (including your’s truly) will seek out the information that ‘confirms’ an established position and ignore what does not.  It takes much more effort to take an honest (and critical) look at the evidence and go wherever it leads.  Few actually do.

Confirmation (or my side) bias is powerful because it is hidden under layers of fact and explanation that sounds rational.  The position being guarded seems completely reasonable to the holder of the opinion, in their eyes they own the moral high ground, and those who disagree are simply ignorant, selfish or otherwise deficiencient.  It is often this moral stake in the ground that makes it so hard to back off from an established opinion, we would rather continue in the righteous delusion than deal with the possibility the other side was right.

As the saying goes, “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”  Even a mountain of evidence cannot uproot an established position.  It is the same as a fortification on a hill that can hold off waves of an assault with few defenders.  That hill being our ego, the banner flying our identity, and we cling to this ground because to lose it would cause us to question ourselves, ask the hard questions of if we are truly virtuous and good, if we are actually intelligent or fooled by our own desire to be right?

It is far easier to remain in the comfort of our own righteous delusion than to consider that the very foundation of our citadel of reason could be sand.  We fear changing our perspective will mean we’re wishy-washy or, worse, might require us to examine the underpinnings of other long held beliefs and leave us with no bedrock to build on.  Most of all, we fear the ridicule and abuse of our ideological enemies, we can’t let them win!

Powerful Propaganda to Innoculate the Masses

The point of propaganda is to build confirmation bias.  The propagandist tries to encourage an emotional bond to an idea, often through appeals to popular prejudice, and yet not overtly or in a way that the targets know they’re being used.  Almost every war is fought for the financial benefit of a few and yet sold as some righteous common cause.

For example, both sides of the American Civil War felt they were fighting for civil rights.  Both sides used labor that was either property outright or treated like a rented mule.  The Northern elites, for all their moralizing abolitionist hubris, depended on an industrial machine that exploited poor European immigrants, taking them right off the boat to send into dark mines, dangerous factory conditions or conscript them into the meat grinder of Lincoln’s war.  The South, obviously, was fighting for the privilege of the slaveholding elites and yet convinced they were depending themselves from Northern tyranny and aggression.

Propaganda is about framing an issue in terms favorable to a particular side without ever appearing to be biased to the target audience.  It is subversive by design, aims to overwhelm the true complexity of debatable mathers with simple sloganeering, refrains meant to be picked up by the midwits in media and then spread by the unsuspecting masses.  The point is to convince the enforcers of the order, the common folk, that they are doing God’s work, being patriots, on the side of irrefutable science or what have you, when in reality they’re serving some undisclosed agenda.

Hitler did not rise to power by being the caricature of evil that we see him as on the other side of the conflict.  No, rather, he had convinced enough of the German people that he was on the side of progress, that he would remove the causes of disease and suffering, then build their country back better than ever.  The Nazis dressed up in a magnificent authoritarian style, it might look bad in retrospect, knowing where it was leading, yet was hope for a nation emerging from years of crisis.

The Safe and Effective Deception

As part of the propaganda campaign, to convince people to inject the controversial new vaccines, news articles repeated the “safe and effective” mantra over and over again.  Both of those words are, of course, subjective.  However, they are assuring and have a sort of sophisticated ring.  Surely this sort of confident declaration is the result of rigorous science and more or less an unquestionable truth, right?

Those in support of vaccine mandates completely ignore the known risks, Big Tech monopolies literally removing groups of people who had encountered adverse effects, and seem to have no awareness of the great potential of unknown risks that come with any new technology hastily introduced.  I mean, somehow the 737 Max got through the approval process, was essentially declared safe and effective, despite a serious defect.  So, in short, we can’t possibly know that there are no long-term health consequences of these experimental vaccines and are only now starting to study that potential.  

But the thing most egregious propaganda is not the downplaying and dismissal of the documented deaths or reasonable concerns of those who have studied history enough to know how quickly narratives change.  They are simultaneously attacking treatment options, like Ivermectin, that are truly effective, cheap and present less of a risk than Tylenol.  It is actually this that makes me distrust them as far as the vaccines.  Why are they so adamantly against things that are actually safer than the vaccines and with a proven record?

Even as the new vaccines have proven to be ineffective as far as stopping the spread and preventing infection, despite the natural immunity of those who had the disease being up to thirteen times stronger than the vaccines, the current propaganda narrative continues that it is the unvaccinated are the real cause of the suffering.  Nevermind that Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson all have financial ties to big media and make a windfall off of this new product.


Far Should Our Trust Go?

The real question is why should we trust the same political and media establishment that lied about where the virus originated, initially downplayed it as less a threat than the seasonal flu, parroted the Chinese regime that was no human-to-human transmission, and even had the audacity to encourage people to visit the crowded streets of Chinatown?

At what point do we start to question their bold declarations?

Can we really trust the same people who, in a complete panic after being wrong, first said “two weeks to stop the spread” and then somehow transitioned this into months of lockdowns?  Can we trust the people who, months ago, laughed off the concerns about vaccine cards being turned into a sort of passport and are now pushing for that very thing?  What can be for a President who is on record, before the election, saying he would not mandate vaccines and is now trying to impose that very policy?  

Supposedly they’re completely trustworthy this time around?

Anyhow, each day I hear stories, that man a friend knew who faithfully wore a mask, had two shots, and then died after becoming sick from the Covid virus.  We have the trickle of stories about vaccine related health complications, contaminated injections resulting in deaths and recalls of millions of doses, warnings from the very inventors of the mRNA technology, and yet told that we’re a conspiracy theorist to question.  Those blinded by confirmation bias will never see.

Fascism By Any Other Name

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Many Mennonites, in North America today, are horrified to find that some who shared their religious/ethnic heritage collaborated with the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (aka: Nazi Party) and rightfully so.  And, predictably, there have been various woke adjacent Mennonite commentators that, while claiming to be above this somehow parrot far-left radicals that accuse anyone with a positive view of traditional American national values of being “white nationalists” or fascists without seeing it as ironic.

The irony is that these moralizing finger-waggers, blinded by their arrogance like those self-righteous religious elites whom Jesus mocked in Matthew 23 (“If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood…”), are unwittingly aligning themselves with the modern variant of fascism.  Their simple minds apparently cannot comprehend that the same evil, to avoid detection, can be dressed differently and that this time it is their turn to enable the tyrants and true fascists.

History repeats?

Real Fascists Please Stand Up

Fascism is a hard word to define, many dictionary definitions are insufficient or too narrow and do not give a sufficient description. The following quote (from an article, “What Is Fascism?”) gives a better picture of what the term is referring to and why some of us see this emerging in the current corporate and government institutional regime: 

Mussolini coined the term “fascism” in 1919.  The word “fascism” comes from the Italian “fascio,” meaning a bundle or group, and is considered a term for a militant brotherhood. The word “fasces” means an ax tightly bound with sticks, an image that became a symbol of the fascist movement, according to the History Department at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

How is fascism defined? Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University in New York, who is widely considered the father of fascism studies, told Live Science that fascism is “a form of political practice distinctive to the 20th century that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques.

Two common themes of fascism that Paxton lists “anti-liberalism, rejecting individual rights, civil liberties, free enterprise and democracy,” also “exclusion of certain groups, often through violence,” and I’ll add that fascists have tended to have an obsession with what they consider to be impurities.  A particular German leader saw certain groups as being vectors of disease and thus justified their elimination.

So, the two primary elements of fascism, distilling this down, are this obsession with contaminates and the merger (or bundling) of power.  The only real difference between fascism and Socialism is that the latter had been more concerned with class distinctions and the prior with racial difference.  But, in the modern era, when the ‘Socialist’ left regularly uses skin color to divide people, and seem fine using corporate power to advance their social agenda, and are the masters of propaganda, it is basically a distinction without a difference.

Sure, they can call themselves “anti-fascists” or “Antifa” and claim that they’re only assaulting Nazis. But, come on people, a guy at the mall can wear a red suit, black boots, and call himself Santa—he’s still not going to come down your chimney with Christmas goodies. And look who is behind most of the violence across this country in the past few years.

Hint: It is not those individuals, totally unarmed, many of them military veterans, who entered the Capital Building on January 6th.

Not defending that either, they should be held accountable, but the difference is that these rioters do not have the corporate media shilling for them nor free reign of the college campus with their demands or sympathetic prosecutors who look the other way at their criminal behavior.

Like it or not, Trump supporters are not anti-democratic, not in the least, and simply wanted allegations of fraud and abuse to be heard. I mean, isn’t it is a little strange that the most well-armed part of our population would go into January 6th planning to take over the government and forget their entire arsenal at home?  If it truly was an “insurrection,” as our totally fair and unbiased political establishment would have us believe, why did they not bring any weapons with them?

Night after night a Federal building, a court house, was attacked by far-leftists in Portland. In Seattle we had a whole section of the city taken over and declared an “autonomous zone” in defiance of the government. Over two billion dollars of damages, dozens murdered, in a summer of violence that our corporate media called “mostly peaceful protests” and yet we’re only talking about the wrongness of this one outburst?  Propaganda much?

Funny how January 6th was not called an unguided ‘mostly peaceful’ Capital Building tour, why is that?

But I do digress.

Fascism is “anti-liberalism, rejecting individual rights, civil liberties, free enterprise and democracy,” and basically Marxism on steroids. In other words, fascism is authoritarian, collectivist, my tribe versus yours, willing to close private business (or churches) and undermine the democratic process to achieve their ends. So, ask yourself, who was asking for mail-in ballots that are an invitation for fraud banned in most countries? Who is asking for collective judgment (or pardon) of people based only on their skin color? Who was creating the dictatorial mandates, in name of keeping us pure of disease, at the expense of our freedom?

Those Who Defend “Papers Please” Are Fascists

My reason for writing this is the response to the meme below by some exceedingly ignorant people from my own Mennonite tribe:

Ironic…

The first response, a virtue signal about those dying in India, a total whataboutism, was completely insensitive to those suffering under the current nonsense. I’m pretty sure this smug individual won’t bother to watch this video nor ever question approved content they spew on social media. They can’t, they were raised in and remain in a religious cloister that taught them, “go along with the group” and “do as your told.” They might eventually drop the cultural costume some day, and yet they have not demonstrated any ability in our brief conversation to think independently or beyond the narrative being pushed.

No, they “believe science,” which is actually only an appeal to an authority they themselves do not posses, and ignore the mounting evidence that the ‘vaccines’ are totally ineffective. They will continue to think of themselves as well-informed, smarter than their cautioning peers, despite the fact that the six-foot social distancing rule was bogus, as was the focus on surfaces and mask mandate. This coming from someone who had N95 masks back in January of 2020 and while the ‘experts’ were still saying that we should be more concerned about the seasonal flu. Masks make a negligible difference if any at all. There is no proof otherwise.

So now that we’re talking about vaccine passports and literally forcing people to get an injection that has little or not value, that should not be necessary for those who have natural immunity through infection, and comes with the unknown long-term risks of any experimental new product, they still don’t see the problem?

I’m sorry, but only a fascist would be okay with this, because only a fascist is okay with “exclusion of certain groups” and take no heed of the individual rights or civil liberties of those who wish only to travel freely without harassment. To see the religious elites of the Mennonites not only tolerate, but enthusiastically endorse such policies, should send a chill up the spine of those moderate or apolitical in their ranks. These ‘educated’ nitwits don’t seem to get that the Nazi party came to power and won Germans over with the good they were doing—the Holocaust came later.