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More than ever before in American history people are no longer able to trust their leaders in government, industry and the media. Rather than put our confidence in official positions of power and influence, there is a better way to concentrate our focus. That is, we should allow history, independent science and substantiated facts to be our arbiters.
For example, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, it was understandable that we lacked sufficient, objective information to make informed judgments and decisions. All of the data about the new coronavirus strain and its spread was derived and disseminated from official sources. Therefore, we had to rely upon the reputation of the professional institutions and the believability of so-called experts to guide us.
Without being political, partisan or biased, we can now review the official narrative and determine what was true, false and remains unproven. We were told there were enormous numbers of deaths among the elderly to justify emergency measures to rapidly develop novel drugs and new vaccines. However, the evidence shows the opposite. The vast majority of deaths in hospitals, critical care centers and nursing homes were people who died from pre-existing comorbidities that may have been complicated by SARS-2 infection. In addition, the earlier accepted course of treatment – quarantine and oxygen therapy – was shown to be largely ineffective and, in fact, further complicated rising mortality rates.
Moreover, if a patient in hospice care with terminal cancer or COPD became infected, the death would have been ruled Covid-19. This manipulation of cause-of-death certificates presented an image that the virus was far more lethal than it actually was. Only about 7 percent of reported Covid deaths can actually be associated with the virus as the primary cause.
Many medical professionals have reported that the PCR diagnostic test used throughout the world was remarkably flawed with very high rates of false positives. it has been known for a couple decades that PCR is an unreliable diagnostic tool for infectious diseases. Had we not relied on PCR, the case rate would never have warranted such a hysteric reaction. In the absence of novel drugs targeting the SARS-2 virus specifically nor a vaccine, health officials held firm to the story that there was no effective treatment. Infected people should return home and quarantine themselves until their condition worsens. The reality is that there were multiple highly effective drugs and therapeutic protocols that could have been prescribed but weren’t. As a result, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost unnecessarily. Worst, this may have been the first time in American medicine when large numbers of orthodox physicians and medical experts, the large majority who are pro-vaccine, were attacked, ridiculed and cancelled for suggesting early treatment with FDA approved off-label drugs such as hydroxychoroquine and ivermectin. Any doctor who spoke out was fair game.
Locking down entire cities and quarantining large numbers of presumably infected people did nothing to stop the pandemic. Such brash measures miscalculated the long-term consequences. Throughout the pandemic depression and anxiety, suicides, alcohol consumption and drug overdoses reached record highs.
In addition, all of the propaganda about the Covid vaccines being safe and effective was indisputably erroneous. Clearly when the major institutions that create and execute national health policies are repeatedly wrong and misguided, the public quickly loses trust. These public health debacles, as well as other issues, cost taxpayers enormous sums. The latest is a $40 billion aid package to dump into the Ukrainian government’s losing war with Russia. It is unfathomable that supporting a nation militarily and economically, which has been ranked as the most corrupt in Europe, would take precedence over the severe crises in the domestic economy. Congress’ aid package becomes all the more ludicrous and egregious when we take into account the US’s increasing inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and widespread shortages in infant formula.
Americans will recognize money spent wisely and their own interests when it produces positive results. However, now we witness the majority of expenditures failing to resolve problems; rather bailouts more often than not further enrich billionaires and private corporate interests. Instead of resolving any of the country’s serious struggles, the media on behest of the government distracts us with warring debates of critical race theory and gender politics.
As a consequence of decades of consistent budgetary and domestic failures, one does not need to be an oracle to envision the future. All that is necessary is to examine our constraints and foibles. We are now facing a perfect storm of pain, suffering and destruction: financial inequality and poverty, global warming, environmental migration, and disease pandemics. Yet when any reasonable person questions what can be done, we are told we are fine and the best and brightest are on hand to solve our problems. However, in no small measure, it was the best and brightest during the past 60 years who were the architects for the crises we face today.
We need to step back to have a purview of the larger picture in order to observe what we as individuals can do to prevent or mediate the catastrophes we will all face. This begins by reaching agreement that those in power are the structural problem and can never come up with satisfying solutions.
An optimist will say that our socio-political and ecological conditions will improve, as long as the right candidate is elected to sit in the Oval Office. Since the nation is so viciously divided between clashing ideologies, this is wishful thinking. The pessimist, on the other hand, reflects back upon the previous administrations since Eisenhower and declares nothing fundamental will change. It will only worsen. The climate optimist says that they are lucky their home has not been swept away in a flood, burnt to the ground from a wildfire or leveled by a hurricane. For the moment their lives are safe so everything will be fine in the future. The pessimist focuses on the reality about what happens when we lack a national or worldwide Marshall Plan to curb our impending climate-induced crises.
Throughout the US, people are waking up to a once in a lifetime experience that our body-politics are built upon a fragile foundation held together with scotch tape and paper clips. Others are waking up to the reality that they may be evicted from their homes and apartments tomorrow. About 75 percent of restaurants and bars closed during the pandemic will never reopen again. Yet the sole message fed to us daily by the mainstream media is that the only important issue on hand is to remain fearful of a virus, get tested, and keep up with your Covid-19 vaccine boosters.
Governors, state legislators and mayors contribute to the collective hysteria and are determined to pass bills to impose strict penalties on those who resist. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia do their best to ensure that no medical experts, advocates or common citizens with data or facts on social platforms contradict the official health policies and narratives.
In the meantime, the nightly news, depending upon the political ideology of the network, airs politicized rhetoric and images of Washington’s spin for that day to keep the masses paralyzed in a state of fear and helplessness. If the average person asks what are the top ten or so issues that our nation should be focused upon, barely anything found in the mainstream media would be on that list.
Why?
It is not as complex or as unfathomable as it might appear on the surface. The basis of Ockham’s Razor is that to cut through the fat and get at the meat, the correct answers are usually the simplest. We might begin by acknowledging that we are a nation divided but we have always been divided to some degree; however it has never been as purulent and hostile as today. The uniqueness of our society has been our diversity, languages, cultures and accents, and its ethnic and racial differences. America’s dialectic has been one that inspires to become acquainted with these differences, such as southern hospitality, the Pacific Northwest’s relaxed and playful lifestyle, the quiet reserve and rural persona of the Midwest and the frenetic professional energy to succeed in the Northeast and California. Perhaps we appreciate each other in more ways than we consciously realize. Historically, when it was necessary to unite together, we did so as a nation – the world wars and the Great Depression are but two examples.
If we were to ask the average person in the 1930s what their priorities were, they would not be much different than today: a living wage, a home, food to feed the family and educational opportunities. Families wanted their children to be educated and succeed in ways the parents were unable.
There have always been conflicting attitudes towards social order or how the nation should be governed. But today what we are observing is not concerted efforts to advance improvements for how we govern ourselves, but rather we are retreating backwards into tribalism, identity politics and a new class warfare. No one can predict where this conflict and confusion will ultimately lead.
Identity politics, the effort for groups based upon race, social status, gender or religion to create exclusive political alliances founded on groupthink, has found its scriptures in both the Left and the Right. On the Left we find the insane rationale that if one is born Caucasian then racism is built into your genetic inheritance. There can be no escape from this curse, no redemption or purification by fire regardless of how much public service one performs for the greater good. On the Right we have the identity politics of white supremacism, anti-Semitism, and a fascist Christian evangelicalism built upon medieval superstitions.
Melanie Phillips gives us a clearer understanding for why we should not rely upon those pundits who believe that either conservative or liberal truths will save us from ourselves. Despite disagreeing with Phillips on many of her other socio-political positions, we believe she correctly identifies the fundamental flaws in contemporary liberalism being institutionalized across our campuses and within the Democrat party. First, it is unable to establish a hierarchy of values and morals. For example, if one refuses to say that any lifestyle or culture is better than another, then it cannot be said that liberalism is better than conservatism or any other ideology. Consequently, faux liberalism cannot legitimately defend the very principles upon which it defines itself: freedom of speech and religion, tolerance, gender and class equality, etc. It contradicts its own principles and removes the dignity of the individual, which is at the heart of liberalism and serves as its moral backbone. What we are witnessing therefore in modern liberalism, according to Phillips, is “the strong dominating the weak,” and this is a “libertarian ideology that suppresses the facts” that contradict it. It is therefore an ill-liberal ideology.
Sadly we find highly educated people supporting these irrational beliefs as well as elected officials in both parties. On the Left are the college educated young adults who are highly sensitive and were raised in protected bubbles with the beliefs they are exceptional and entitled. These are the ones demanding complete fealty to gender politics. On the Right are the disgruntled working class and disenfranchised dropouts of society who value a perverted Libertarian ideal built upon gun ownership. And both have their allies in the mainstream media — MSNBC on the Left and Fox on the Right – to provide a bullhorn to the larger public.
Both true liberalism and true conservatism, which at one time could share a constructive dialogue together, have morphed into their polar opposites: an irrational faux enlightenment of liberalism versus a neo-fascist traditionalism that is petrified of the future and wants to turn back the clock. The current speed being measured of the melting of the Arctic and Greenland, and the recent breaking up of the Antarctic ice sheets will sooner rather than later be experienced up and down the Atlantic coastal cities and the Gulf. Nobody in government is addressing this far greater threat than a virus that seems no more dangerous than a bad seasonal flu.
More than ever be
Amidst all of the noise of protest, identity classes and coronavirus panic a laundry list of more serious issues are either being ignored or completely drowned out by the cacophony of overtly emotional hyena cries. How much attention is being given to the 66 million Americans now food insecure or the 2 million who don’t have clean drinking water. Four in ten Americans, 132 million, are conservatively financially broke. Obesity is the health risk most associated with Covid deaths; 40 percent of American adults, 20 years and over, are clinically obese and another 72% are overweight. What is being done to free our federal health agencies from the grip of the junk food industry’s lobbying? Nothing. To make matters worse, 44 million Americans are uninsured and an additional 38 million have inadequate health insurance. Approximately a quarter of the population has health coverage well below the standards of any other developed nation. How much of this gross neglect has contributed to the US having the highest percent of world Covid deaths?
And should it not surprise us that the ideological clashes have become so vile and contemptible? But the underlying problem does not reside with the camps facing each other on opposite sides of the street. Rather our educational system is a disgrace. Forty-three million American adults (21%) are illiterate or functionally illiterate according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. How much of our neglected educational system, and legislations’ disdain for teachers, is contributing to the civil war many analysts fear is brewing?
We have a president who seems to have a stronger ambition to be the president of Ukraine to battle those nasty Russians rather than deal our domestic crises that are ripping the citizenry apart and leading the nation to third world status. The alternative was a buffoon in pathological denial about climate change and chased the wildest conspiracy series. Daily, new studies are being reported that indicate the climate crisis is far worse than earlier forecasts presumed. Instead of worrying about Central American climate migrants trying to enter the country, we should be preparing for the massive migrations that will be happening within our borders. Last year half a million Oregon residents, about a tenth of the state’s population, were given evacuation warnings due to the increasing pace of wildfires. This is just the beginning
If anyone believes that the US is economically capable of tackling these problems without a catastrophic blowback, they are delusional. The US’ total debt now stands at $91 trillion. Total personal debt is $23 trillion. Unfunded government liabilities at an astronomical $169 trillion. This is a financial tsunami that can only be curbed by keeping the dollar printing machines rolling 24-7 until doomsday. The competency of our government’s economists must be questioned. The Biden administration was completely wrong in predicting the impact of sanctions against Putin. No one in Washington seems to have even considered that Russia’s economy might be much stronger and resilient than assumed. Nor did they seem to even consider that Putin would win Washington’s economic war of contrition, which it clearly is. After three months of sanctions, Russia has now emerged as the world’s strongest economy and the ruble has emerged as a hard global currency. With the majority of nations thumbing their nose at the US sanctions, America is rapidly losing its role as a world leader.
The big question is whether we have the capability, let alone the willingness, to relinquish our personal dogmas and then individually and collectively step outside of the malignant atmosphere of negativity, hatred and virtue-shaming and begin to address real future threats? Urgently the future needs to be re-envisioned. It might be based upon the Great Reset being orchestrated by Davos and the global elite. However, the foundation and elitist values upon which a Reset is being built upon are the very failures of neoliberal capitalism that has brought the US and the international community to its current impasse of self-destruction. Nor can we look back at the past. It is history. Neither our modern conservatism nor liberalism as they are now ideologically identified would have a constructive role. Both are terribly outdated, decrepit and utterly corrupt.
Bertrand Russell remarked that “science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.” Yet science doesn’t, nor can it ever, provide the truth of an entire picture. It can only tell us about distinct parts. In that context, we must begin to investigate what we don’t know in order to arrive at a consensus of truth for saving the planet and ourselves.
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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow
They are regular contributors to Global Research.
Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
