The Coffee Committee, February 11, 2022
As covid is beginning to show up in the rear view mirror, it seems a good opportunity to review our decision making processes. What the heck happened? Well a lot of things have come to light since it began, and a lot of those things were knowable from the beginning. Not only were things knowable, they were known by many and suppressed. Stories were fabricated. Opportunities for power recognized and acted upon. Cover-ups and duplicity and complicity abounded. Misery, death, and cruelty developed their own cheering sections. Willful disbelief still hangs over us like a cloud as we examine the actions that were taken and more importantly failed to be taken throughout this whole mess. Before us now is the task of sorting out the truth and then picking up the pieces to begin healing.
We begin with the largest player, the Chinese Communist Party. They control almost a fifth of the world population, about 1.4 billion people. When the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. ended, China began in earnest their gambit to become the preeminent World Power by overtaking the western democracies. In the 1990’s CCP money went into the Clinton campaign, remember the nuns with the poverty vow making huge donations in California. Long before Representative Swalwell of the House Intelligence Committee ran for national office, a female CCP spy became closely attached to him. High ranking House members, Senators, and bureaucrats, of both parties, became wealthy with Chinese sweetheart deals. We see sports teams and famous players that seem to have entered into a Faustian bargain, they grew wealthy on Chinese money while remaining silent on the plight of the oppressed Uyghur slaves. Post Cold War communists that joined and then tainted the environmentalist movement are their allies. The CCP has always needed a large army to control the Chinese people. Now they have greatly expanded their offence abilities through sea, air, and space militarization. They expanded their control into the South China Sea, and hold influence over Western hemisphere ports of entry. They also have intensified their effort to develop biological weapons. This effort included gain of function research on viruses at their lab in Wuhan; which was funded in part, illegally, by U.S. agencies. Wuhan is where this devastating virus began. Another large player is called the U.S. Deep State. They are a loose coalition of career bureaucrats, elected officials, judges, educators, and media functionaries. They bounce between these jobs and feel obligated to support one another. They can generally be characterized as being globalist, progressive, persistent, dismissive of the Constitution, Ivy League educated, patronizing of minorities, ruthlessness, and having a belief that the end justifies the means. The Deep State has grown significantly since WWII to the point where an emboldened Obama era Justice Department and Judiciary officials actively conspired to spy on a Republican candidate for President. The Justice Department had always prided itself on being apolitical, but this corruption runs deep. FISA Court documents were falsified; stored emails were actually rewritten to support the false narratives. After the Republicans won the election, Deep State efforts intensified into direct opposition of the sitting President! They tried to impeach and then fight against reelection of the Republican President. Troubling was the media refusal to acknowledge laptop computer files of the son which detailed longstanding corruption between the Democrat presidential candidate and the Chinese government. More troubling was the use of the viral pandemic as an excuse for political chicanery. Voting procedures in key States were changed by both the courts and state executives contrary to state laws which had been made by the only constitutionally authorized groups, the state legislatures. Mail in voting, dead people voting, ballot harvesting, but most importantly a willingness to look the other way tainted the election.
The most powerful group, measured in potential power, is the American people. But, we were conflicted. On one hand we wanted to trust and cooperate with government officials. We wanted to believe that they were in the best position to know the truth and they had our best interests at heart. On the other hand there is reality, life experience, and a love of liberty.
I recall the initial two week stay at home and mask request in 2020. I knew from past experience that trying and failing to keep dust out of my nose while watching my breath steam out the side of the mask that these masks would barely slow down a highly contagious virus. I knew when the virus was not permitted to be called the Wuhan Flu or the China Flu following normal precedent as in the Spanish Flu and Hong Kong Flu that major political power was being brought to bear to control the story being told. I watched the reporting of most network news fall in line. I knew that after the first day of the two week effort when there was no mention of it ending that we had been snookered. I also knew that it was doing more harm than good when I wore a mask to allay the fear in the eyes of many that I encountered.
We now have the advantage of hindsight that lockdowns and masking did not work. Communities that engaged in those practices fared the same in regard to death from Covid as those that did not; however, quality of life issues were very different, favoring those that refused to lock down. As a consequence we see a large migration away from lockdown States to the States that showed more respect for individual rights. There are other reasons, high taxes, crime, and overregulation. It seems the cavalier handling of Covid was the final straw. We have yet to see the ramifications of this further segregation of thought style, but red States becoming more red and blue States more blue has to change the political dynamics. We must acknowledge that when we chose to lockdown, that we also chose that nursing home and hospitalized people would die without being able to share their last thoughts. Families and friends would cease to gather, the seasons would not be marked. Friends overdue for getting together would put things off for two more years. The ephemeral flower that is the high school prom was trampled underfoot as the necessary socialization any age child was cancelled. We know that a child becoming literate by Grade 3 is of huge importance, yet we were willing to sacrifice childhood development for some greater good. We knew then that we were condemning family businesses to bankruptcy. We knew then that we were crippling our economy and diluting our dollar. Lawyers advised business clients that they were at risk of liability if they did not enforce an approved Covid policy. We decided that fear of this unknown virus was of greater import than all the known costs. We decided that we should abandon the pursuit of the things we love because the fear of the virus was so great. We then sought to magnify that fear despite logic. Masks became a shibboleth. The fear worked and became the driving force in everyday decisions. In short we became less human. Did anyone witness folk driving in their cars alone wearing masks with their knuckles white with fear as they gripped the steering wheel while they drove out to purchase their necessities? I did, it was heartbreaking. They were courageous, but spreading that fear was heartless.
We know now that this pandemic was not as bad as it could have been, even if we factor in the poor decisions that made it worse. Let us assume that it was to be a worst case scenario. Does it seem sound policy to cower in the face of such adversity? Should we stop growing food? Stop making and distributing clothing and shelter? Do we do so little of consequence that we can afford to take a couple of years off. Should we consign our decision making to bureaucrats masquerading as an elite clique of doctors? We elect representatives that agree to be bound by the restrictions in our Constitution, but then give us a Gilda Radner “Never mind” when courageous steadfastness is most needed.
Fortunately, most of the country persevered and continued to produce the everyday necessities of life and care for one another. There are heroic stories of defiance that saved many needed businesses. One absurd word came into prominence to describe different types of occupation, essential as opposed to non-essential workers. Another example of hindsight proving what should have been evident before. There is no such thing as a non-essential worker. All of us are required to pitch in to make this economy and culture work. That is not to say that we would not be better off if a lot of us did different things. It would be wonderful if half of the people in the public sector earned their living by offering things that people would willingly buy, as opposed to being funded by the forced taking of money, but that is a topic for another day.
So, why did we do it? Why did we allow it? Why did we participate? These are rhetorical questions; perhaps the better question is why did our ability to make decisions fall so short? Perhaps we needed more information. If we knew then what we know now about the financial ties many of our leadership and media have with China. If we knew that those ties were developed and nurtured by China just as deliberately as when they worked the spies with Senator Feinstein, and Representative Swalwell. If we knew of the corrupt nature of the Biden family with China and if we knew that that the people telling us about the virus knew about the corruption, would we not have made better decisions? The technique of labeling reasonable statements as misinformation and disallowing their spread by social media companies had a profound negative effect on our ability to make sound decisions. Cancel Culture did major damage to our style of making choices. I think that we know now that many of us were blind to the obvious because we wanted to believe the things we were being told. I think we know now to question even ourselves for unjustifiable bias. I think we can see now that the concept of free speech is foundational to good decision-making. Our press must be cleansed by the free market, our representatives must be filtered out based on the truths learned these past two years, and we must be involved in selecting their replacements. Now as the pandemic chaos is moving into the rear view mirror we must restore the balance of power to where the people call the shots again. The representatives we chose must respect that the powers they are given are limited. Overreaching by authorities is finally being dialed back in many of our blue states as they realize that their political jobs are at risk. Our Canadian friends to the North are facing this same issue. Will their authorities accede to the will of the people, or will they try to crush the
Truckers in the style of China at Tiananmen Square? We here must also show the backbone of those Canadian truckers and farmers, the same backbone that Rosa Parks had.
Time is of the essence because we have new national choices of global import to make. Do we want to be divided into angry groups by race, class, and creed? Or do we believe the maxim that Abraham Lincoln popularized “United we stand, Divided we fall”? Do we want a socialist form of government or the constitutional republic framework we have now? The former has an elite leadership that cannot be fired without a revolution, the latter has an elite leadership that we continue to rehire but could be fired or constrained every two years. Do we want nation States or do we want a globalist government? A likely view of globalism would be a China run autonomous United Nations with the corruption of the WHO and the Olympic Committee combined. Do we want Supreme Court Justices to interpret the Constitution as it is written or do we want it interpreted by the next Justice as she thinks it should have been written? Should we pack the Court? What do we do about Ukraine and Taiwan? These and more questions will be largely decided this summer.
I urge you err towards the side of love in your decision making, be it freedom, family, friends, posterity, unity, passion, or dreams. There is fear on the other side of the slate, replace fear with prudence and careful judgement. We have learned through this ordeal to question formerly trusted sources like government agencies and traditional news sources. Trust instead your informed judgement and strive toward your aspirations with clear eyed confidence. May God bless us.
Gerry Godfrey