conspiracy theories

Sun 6.28.20,

      I have a neighbor for whom the mention of anything resembling a conspiracy sends her into spasms of righteousness.  That’s not happening in our country, she says, casting aspersion on anyone who so much as wonders about adversities whose facts don’t add up.  Epstein suicide in federal prison, anyone?  What I’ve noticed about my neighbor is that she is very much threatened by life.  There must be order, or else chaos.  She is like the Germans who hadn’t a clue about the concentration camps and what was happening in them.

      The problem with acknowledging conspiracies is one becomes a witness to it and either does nothing to correct it, or one acts, and most assuredly gets handled by the conspirators.  Alexis de Tocqueville had this to say about democratic governments:

“[The majority in a democracy covers [society’s] surface with a small complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to be nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd. . . . I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reigns than in America.”

 What’s happening with the virus situation, the forced wearing of masks, the social distancing and the assured collapse of the economy by the shuttering of most businesses?  One would like to believe that it’s to protect the country’s citizens.  Is it possible that a country would destroy its economy to save its people?  What’s more important to a government, keeping afloat or saving people who by and large were already compromised health-wise when exposed to the virus?  A government’s first task is to maintain its country’s viability,

      The situation presently is becoming intolerable.  The supermarket experience is a trial.  Are we to believe at this late date that people are still hoarding toilet paper?  I don’t think so, but the grocery shelves offer only two choices, the Mexican newsprint-type rough papers and the high end stuff that costs more than a prime rib steak.  But one has no choice and puts up with senseless and humiliating regimentation.  The mask-wearing clerks for whom you can’t decipher what is being said, whatever business one utilizes, have become rude, one is paying money for affront.  We’re doing this to protect ourselves and also by extension, you is the catch-phrase.  Businesses more and more, regardless of virus are moving in that direction.  They are doing us a favor, so shut up and take it!

      I find it interesting that an economy that was teetering on the brink of collapse, hence the election of the business man Donald Trump, somehow will now be blamed on the virus.  I wrote an essay last week about the role finance played in the motivation behind the civil war, rest assured it has a major part in our present circumstance.  The hair salon is finally allowed to open and on booking an appointment one is given a set of guidelines and precautions to be followed, 22 rules one must adhere to from wearing masks, to having your temperature taken, completely sanitizing oneself upon entering the salon, having to answer personal questions, and one may not bring any pocketbooks or bags into the establishment, may not be accompanied, especially by children, may not visit the restroom and so forth.  Are we dealing with the bubonic plague or a virus?  A people who’ve been given that much power over others will not easily let it go.  As for those who suffer these indignities one has only to look at the wearing of masks, on an empty road with no one around for miles, alone in the car with the mask on, wearing the mask riding the bicycle.  When it comes to governmental lies the little ones are easily uncovered, not so the big ones because their alternative is too fearful to accept.

The favorite essay this month has again been, Opening Moves