Before I explain how
wonderful the COVID-19 era is, and is going to be, for us and for liberty, I
must give a nod to the very real concerns about agriculturalization of human
beings by the state. The new American project seems to be about converting
the amber waves of Republican grain into one
giant CAFO, complete with centrally controlled
feeding, mandated meds, and plenty of one-way alleys and head-gates.
We are not all drinking
Brawndo, not yet.
While
the state prefers that we be sheep, we should approach the government herd like
a well-trained border collie, from rear vantage point, with a keen and focused
eye. What is the herd doing, and why is it doing that? Where are
the leaders, and where are the idiots (not mutually exclusive, of
course)! What is our objective for the herd? After all, the border
collie is as smart as any advanced four year old, knows its job, and has
confidence in its ability to manage toward a goal. Further, he has no
doubts at all that he will be successful.
Deep Survival: Who Liv...Gonzales,
LaurenceBest Price: $10.77Buy New $11.59(as
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2020 is a great time to be an
information consumer. Sure, social media and
computer/TV/infotainment/humanitarian giants (talking
about you, Bill Gates) and
their political puppets are all about shaping what we consume and understand
and know, to maintain confusion, promote fear and culture obedience as if in a
lab, on agar. Yet, I’m not only still able to read LRC, but many other
resources proliferating Austrian economics, real history, and actual
information in real context. The Last American Vagabond has a great list of news sources that any
thinking person would be interested in. This simply was not available, even ten
years ago. The AIER, and FEE, as well as Mises.org and a hundred others
have been offering solid economic and other content that is being picked up
(perhaps unknowingly) by mainstream mouthpieces (the Post, The Times, Drudge,
etc), and trending. Even as mainstream media – which is to say
corporate-government media – is struggling to stay relevant and interesting and
“in control” – we are observing an evolution of wonderful global content that
really matters.
I am
seeing the genius of the younger generations, and the sweet agelessness of the
internet community, and I’m beyond impressed.
Beyond
that, here’s a short list that makes me smile.
The public education bubble is bursting. Home, private,
independent and unschooling is unstoppable, and technology makes it possible to
outperform any public school in a thousand different ways. Colleges and the
enormous federal debt they consume on the backs of students and parents are
finally being held to account. Recent years of awareness of the burdens of
college loan debt on younger generations, and improved information about
what the economy (your neighbors around the world) really want
and need you to do for them is causing improved decision-making
by younger generations. They were already borrowing less for college, and the
current government response to the megacorona is driving the point home.
Prepping is trending. Everyone is
interested in cooking and storing food, being creative at home, learning skills
of productivity and survival, and DIY’ing, always popular, is getting a real
shot in the arm, so to speak. The same media conglomerates, social media,
Youtube and other corporate-government controllers (along the lines of CIA
message shaping here and here) are finding that we like a lot of
different things, and that includes prepping and survival skills.
SAS Survival Handbook,...Wiseman,
John 'Lofty'Best Price: $12.99Buy New $12.49(as
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History is ever more
accessible to the Internet generation. For example, this outstanding
series by Whitney Webb on the Amerithrax case is
remarkable in its depth and reach, and it’s better than anything Hollywood
could ever derive. For the first time, people who never watched broadcast TV
and choose their movies on demand, based on what their own – not
corporate-government – networks advise, can learn how things connect. Who
knew Stanley Milgram’s six degrees of separation are now just
three? They did!
Authenti-ception
is the new sixth sense. Sensing the truth, identifying who is and isn’t
authentic, and what is and isn’t real and true, has evolved along with mass media
and the internet, data compression and AI. Hardly anyone is left on the
planet believes reality TV is real. Very few believe anything any
government has to say, anywhere, and of course Donald Trump has been huuugely
effective in helping this fundamental narrative along. Beyond that,
Wikileaks has been a big help, revealing what’s behind the news we hear, and
the lies politicians and corporations spew. This evolution has been a
long time coming – and now it is fracturing faith even in the top law enforcement
agency. The reaction to General Flynn’s case being rejected for FBI
malfeasance gets a nod and a shrug, because we already know the police can
legally lie to you, the feds will set you up, and plea bargains are usually
contrived. You could call it an age of cynicism, but Americans are not
cynics, by any means. It is simple “us and them,” this is just how
government behaves. Everyone knows that.
We understand the
surveillance state. This is a tricky one, as John Whitehead points out, and has been
pointing out accurately for years. The internet generations accept this
as the cost of doing business, and in some ways are on board with the state’s
interest, of moving our entire lives online, in a cashless, paperless, with
24/7 government/corporate-curated consumption, because it is easier than the
alternative. Many people like the idea of a driverless car or taxi, and have
grown up with and accept intrusive security procedures, lockdowns, militarized
police and the panopticon. However, they also understand that what’s
theirs is theirs, and they appreciate cheap and easy encryption, and are
willing to use it, unlike their parents and grandparents who whine about the
surveillance state and won’t encrypt their messages, use a non-Five Eyes country
VPN, or a
secure online chat and meeting tool.
We have lost interest in
war. The feminization of western society can create sheep, and sheep
don’t fight well. It is no accident that the language of “war” has become
ever pervasive, by governments, corporate and religious. There’s something
compelling about the dichotomy of social clarity in a time of war, even as
confusion and destruction and randomness prevail. That mix of clarity and
fog interspersed makes our adrenaline flow, and adrenaline is a drug that all
the other drugs want to be when they grow up. In a perfect example of
government idiocracy, we have simultaneous reports of the US military assisting in total population vaccination for
the nCorona while prohibiting anybody with the antibodies from
enlisting, without waiver. Not
Sure, anyone?
Hospital central planning has
been revealed as unfixable. This is lesson 99 of the continuing education
in health care all Americans have been getting since the Clinton Health Care Task force in 1993.
COVID mandates and decades of past government edicts have cost hospitals and
patients billions of dollars, as well as 250,000 to 400,000 deaths a year, and illustrate the
flaws of central planning. Here in blue Virginia under Order 53 Lockdown, only 22% of the ventilators are even in use,
and hospitals are largely vacant, with health care workers of all kinds have
been laid off or let go. As centrally planned medicine boldly fails
again, for example, the number of people with portable and privately owned
oxygen supplies in their homes just keeps growing, present in 1.5 million homes
just a few years ago. Americans increasingly seek to heal themselves, and do
so.
Lockdown
has created 100 million households of resistance – even among those who feel
the government is helping. You take away jobs, opportunity, exercise,
family connections and provide “free” money, mass surveillance and a police
state – that ought to work, right, Gov? But many humans are as least as
smart as border collies, and we found all kinds of new ways to get our fixes,
most of which entailed new learning and new tools, even new priorities and
goals that will complement the coming insurrection. None of what we are
learning is making us better citizens, but some of what we are learning is
going to help us survive. Whether on purpose or by accident, whether we agree
politically or not, we are all accelerating the collapse of the already
collapsing state, and even seeing beyond that horizon towards something better.
I have mentioned before the
fantastic book Deep Survival, with its theme of who survives
and who doesn’t. The survivor is the guy or gal who early on admits they
will probably die in, and of, their predicament, and somehow, this recognition
unleashes a kind of creativity and fearlessness and reflection that allows good
decisions, and wise, if sometimes risky, actions. Of course you need
grit, and something that a best-selling novelist talks about here. Paulette Jiles, author of a
number of historical and science fiction books, including the News of the World, says:
The
mind also needs a variety of things, but I think in the contemporary world,
we’re missing a really vital element, which is the world of the imagination.
Which is why people flock to these remakes of Spiderman and Superman and
Deadpool and all of the Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, whoever, because
these are silly and funny and you can just float off into the world of the
imagination on a magical balloon—and you need to do that. It’s not sugar. It’s
not a dessert. It is as necessary as protein.
I can’t help thinking that the
government COVID-19 response, in all of its powerful flaming disorganization
and grand authoritarianism, is in fact moving things along quite nicely for the
cause of liberty, if you know where to look.
Karen
Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant
colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in
Virginia's 6th district in 2012.
Copyright © 2019 Karen Kwiatkowski