10 March 2022

How Liberty Dies

 I got an email yesterday from the college.

I am on a temporary hiatus between classes, the 13 week semester has been broken into two 8 week segments with a week between, and this past week has been the week between. The email informed me that face diapers would no longer be required to attend classes in person.

While on its face (SWIDT?) this is a good thing, it puts me in mind of a larger issue.

Many years from now - perhaps ten or so - when the pan(dem)ic is ancient history as we figure time these days, when new crisis have erupted that cannot go to waste, I believe that someone will crunch the numbers, separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak, and determine the real numbers. The deaths and hospitalizations FOR Covid will be differentiated from the deaths and hospitalizations WITH Covid, and I think we will find that a fraction - between 10 and 15 percent is my guess - of the reported deaths are actually FOR. These results will be quietly published on the last page of a scientific journal and never be seen or talked about on the evening news, maybe getting a passing mention on Fox or Newsmax and that's about it.

China and Russia have taken our measure and found us wanting. Russia is seeing how far they can push things in Ukraine right now, and if they are not stopped by outside action or pure stubborn resistance they will be successful in their bid to reclaim at least parts of Ukraine if not all of it. China will make its bid for Taiwan soon, and unless Taiwan has better luck at gathering allies more steadfast than the US then the ROC will merge with the PROC in short order.

The long term results are even worse.

Our politicians, both D and R, have taken measure of the American public, and once again we have been found wanting. They have seen how easy it is to turn us into sheeple, how quickly we trade essential liberty for the illusion of temporary security; they have seen that Orwell was an optimist and Mencken seriously over-estimated his fellow man. Regardless of how short-term world events turn out, the long term results of today's perfidy will have longer lasting effects.

And it won't end well for any of us.