Even the NY Times Finally Admits the Truth About COVID

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Five years after the height of the COVID masquerade the New York Times finally allows at least the outlines of the true story to show up in its opinion page.  Even in this article the author bends over backward to pretend that the liars had the best intentions.  But it’s so blatantly clear by the actions of the authorities that they were hiding a disgusting truth.  Wuhan was the source of the virus and the United States funded the research that created it.

We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives

If for no other reason I hope RFK Jr has the foresight to shut down the funding on all these types of frankensteinian experiments.  Creating pathogens that have the potential to infect billions and then depending on the fail safe protocols of a third rate research laboratory to save you from a mishap is worse than stupid.  It’s war crime grade irresponsible.

But let’s face facts, this is not health research.  These are CIA bio-weapons labs.  And for all we’ll ever know they released it on purpose to take advantage politically of the ensuing chaos.  Our own government is full of sociopaths that have no qualms about wreaking havoc on our lives through fear and violence.  And they wonder why we fear and hate them more than the Russians and the Chinese.

DOGE, cut off their cash.  It may save all our lives.

What Is This Quintessence of Dust

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It struck me recently, out of nowhere, that we humans are very strange creatures?  That the things we do are irrational and confusing.  We spend most of our lives doing things that bore us or depress us or cause us grief.  That what we want or what we think we must do is often diametrically opposed to what’s good for our minds, bodies and spirits.

There’s nothing profound about these insights.  It’s just that every once in a while, you look around at what you’re doing and what you should be doing and they don’t line up.  I guess it’s an artifact of the complexity of our hyper-complicated world.  Our ancestors in the trees were never confused about what to do.  There were no choices.  You mostly looked for food to eat all day long and then went to sleep hoping that the neighborhood leopard didn’t come to visit during the night.  Even our paleolithic predecessors didn’t have much leeway on what went on during the day.  Maybe the top caveman decided which beta caveman became a hunter or spearhead chipper or fire-tender or whatever other careers were being advertised in the Bedrock Gazette.  But I’m sure it was a lot simpler back then and existential angst must have been at a very manageable level.  And people didn’t live very long so there wasn’t time to reflect on the vicissitudes of Cro-Magnon time management.

I suspect we’re currently at a high point for personal discontent.  Partially it’s because the complexity of our civilization doesn’t make it easy to decide what path to take.  Hunters and spearhead chippers are no longer in high demand.  Even cutting-edge professions can become obsolete almost overnight.  Also, the coping mechanisms we formerly had for dealing with limited opportunities; religion and family have mostly receded in importance.  Now we’re down to antidepressants and government welfare programs.  And neither of these seems to sooth the soul.

A return to religion was a periodic reaction in America.  Going all the way back to the Puritans they would have a religious revival about every seventy-five years or so.  One or more great preachers would appear and exhort the people to return to God and to doing the righteous thing.  And this would have at least a temporary effect on behavior and a positive change on society.

Well, America 2025 is a very different place from America 1950.  And even 1950 was a way different world from 1875.  Religion barely exists in the minds and souls of the current population of this country.  So, by definition any preachers appearing on the horizon won’t look anything like the past.  If Billy Graham showed up today, he would only find a tiny audience for his “crusade.”

But that doesn’t mean we don’t need an equivalent to a religious revival.  Call it a spiritual revival if you want or a lifestyle intervention if that makes it sound more scientific.  But without a doubt people need direction.  Their lives have lost meaning not only in their own eyes but also to society at large.  It is not an exaggeration to say that the people who run this country and the world at large, value your life and happiness not at all.  In fact, all indications are that they want to get you off this planet as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost.

Like the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, this world is looking for spiritual leadership.  And whoever provides it will harness an enormous latent force that currently exists only as discontent and despair in the minds and souls of the people who currently have no purpose in life.  I think it will happen but what it will look like and when it will hit is the mystery.  For old timers it’s just a matter of embracing your Bible or your copy of Marcus Aurelius.

Give It Your Best Shot

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I heard that Trump wants to eliminate federal income tax for anyone earning less than $150,000.  Now isn’t that remarkable.  I can’t pretend that I know how that would impact the federal budget and debt but I’m pretty sure it will make him, at least in the short run, the most popular president in the last two hundred years.

I think this will raise several questions.  Will this force state income taxes to triple?  How will this impact the income taxes of people earning $150,000 to $300,000?  Will my social security and healthcare benefits be paid to me in monopoly money?

But all kidding aside, I know that Trump is considering many radical changes to the tax code.  A while ago I heard he was thinking about replacing income taxes with a federal sales tax increase.  Is this part of the same plan?  Between these ideas and the tariff stuff and the DOGE initiative to cut back the size and cost of the federal government we seem to be looking at a re-invention of government.  Or maybe it would be fair to call it a recalibration.  We all know the cost of government is out of whack and that we can’t possibly sustain the service on the debt indefinitely.  As it is now it’s something like $600 billion.  That’s insane.  What it means is that what Trump is doing isn’t revolutionary madness to the body politic.  He’s applying a tourniquet before the patient bleeds out.

But there’s no guarantee all of this will succeed.  The American voters are fickle and they have no patience.  Unless Trump gets most of his program in place in the next year, the mid-terms will be upon him and he will lose the ability to get legislation through Congress.  So, he’s threading a needle.

But these are exciting times.  People have awakened from a decades-long-dream to find their government is a malignant force that threatens their lives and livelihood.  And their only hope is a crazy man like Donald Trump.  Well, at least it’s not boring.  It’s more like a three-ring circus.  We’ve got wars and tariffs in the first ring.  We’ve got DOGE and the Swamp in the second ring.  And in the third ring we have crime and the illegal aliens.  And Trump is the circus master in the top hat, tails, boots and whip trying to keep the whole circus moving at top speed like an infernal calliope-carousel steam engine.  And hoping that the whole thing doesn’t fly apart in all directions.

I will say I am guardedly hopeful.  Just seeing how much can be done when an energetic and fearless approach is taken, provides encouragement that I can’t remember feeling since Ronald Reagan told us in 1981 that the Carter malaise was over and it was morning in America again.  So maybe it will fail and the whole thing will fall apart and the bad guys will be back in power afterward.

But what have I got to lose by rooting for Team Trump?  Can I be any more blacklisted than I already have been?  Will it matter if they tax me any higher if the money is already becoming worthless?  Can they possibly know any more of my words, deeds or thoughts than they already do?

No!  I have nothing to lose by betting on Trump.  Go for it, Donald.  Give it your best shot.

Critical Drinker Discovers Firefly

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It’s been over twenty years since Firefly was even a distant memory of a television show.  That excellent sci-fi series that struck a decidedly anti-elitist, pro-freedom, anti-“surveillance state” chord with its rag tag crew of space smugglers and other nonconformists in their chronically malfunctioning space ship Serenity.

I’m glad to see that the next generation is coming to recognize what a great show it was and just how much better it was than the current crop of fantasy and science fiction shows that have not a hundredth of its creativity and heart.  Kudos to the Crtical Drinker for saying so.

The 400 Blows (1959) – A Movie Review

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The 400 Blows is reckoned one of the greatest films ever made.  I beg to differ.

I won’t give a spoiler alert because there’s nothing to spoil.  Nothing happens.  This was François Truffaut’s directorial debut.  I don’t know.  If I had been around back then I would have gotten in touch with him urging him to stop making movies, for everybody’s sake.  Mercifully, the movie is in French so that will warn off most of the unwary.  Camera Girl and I decided to watch it tonight after I recorded it from TCM last month during its “Thirty Days of Oscar” celebration of Academy Award winning movies.  Which goes to show you that the Oscars have been selecting bad movies for well over sixty-five years at least.

Wikipedia says that all of these famous filmmakers (Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Steven Spielberg, Jean Cocteau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Richard Linklater, Tsai Ming Liang, Woody Allen, Richard Lester, P C Sreeram, Norman Jewison, Wes Anderson and Nicolas Cage) think this movie is one of the best movies ever made.  Well, that’s too bad.

A 12-year-old boy is bored and gets in trouble at school, runs away from home and gets sent to reform school for trying to steal a typewriter from his father’s office.  At the end of the movie, he escapes from the reform school and runs until he finds himself on the beach at Normandy.  The End.

When the credits came up at the end Camera Girl looked at me and asked me, “That’s it?  What the hell kind of a movie is that?”  I said, “It’s abstract!”  She was not happy.  That will probably be the last French film she will be watching.  I think she holds me directly responsible for this movie.  I think I’ve lost some stature in her eyes because I recorded it and didn’t warn her off.

While at the reform school the kid gets in trouble and one of the men in charge slaps him in the face brutally hard.  So, I was afraid the title was about some horrible beating the boy receives.  But that was the only violence in the film.  The real violence is against the audience.  After watching this film there are ninety-nine minutes I will never get back.  It should be called the “The Ninety-Nine Blows.”

I know I’m just a philistine and I don’t understand art for art’s sake.  But I contend that a motion picture has to amuse the audience in some way.  It can excite or frighten or sadden or confuse or fill the audience with mirth, nostalgia or lust or almost any emotion or intellectual state.  But at the very minimum it cannot bore the audience to tears.  That’s the one feeling it cannot summon up in the audience.  That’s the one unforgiveable sin.  The lights cannot come up on an audience that looks at each other and says, “What the hell was that?”  That unfortunately was our reaction.  If I had seen this in a theater I would have pounded on the manager’s office and demanded our money back.  That’s how bad it was.

Maybe it’s the French.  Being beaten by the Germans in three major wars over the course of less than a century may have done something terrible to their souls.  Maybe this film is a form of revenge on a world that has beaten the snot out of them, physically, psychologically and spiritually.  If that is the case, then I think they went overboard.  No one, not even the Nazis deserves to watch this film.  There are limits to revenge.