Twenty years ago, I watched an interview with a Canadian family who had become disillusioned with their western lifestyle and were concerned about raising their children under the threats of the Cold War. When he retired from the armed forces, the husband and his wife pulled out a globe and looked for a safe place to raise their family. They found a remote island, left their home in Victoria, B.C., and arrived at their new home and haven on the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982. They laughed as they recounted the story. Attempting to avoid the bombs of the Soviet Union, they placed themselves under the bombs of the Argentines.
In Canada we are faced with potential legislation that punishes “wrongthink” with a sentence of life in prison. Unnamed third parties can make human rights complaints about their feelings of insecurity based on long-forgotten internet comments. That little faux pas can cost you $70,000 plus costs. This from a government whose leader has blackface pictures all over the internet that certainly trigger me. Does any of this make any sense?
“When you are confronted with a strange shift in circumstances and worldview, understand what is going on – don’t ignore the obvious signs. See what you see.”
In the United States, a former president is fighting a court decision that may cost over $400 billion. And US dollars to boot. What was the sin? The prosecuting attorney, who was elected to her position on a platform of “getting Trump”, convinced a Democrat judge that Mr. Trump was guilty - without the nicety of a trial. The court case was to determine damages. Holy Magna Carta! We are in the year 1214! The judge “determined” that the banks who lent Mr. Trump money for a business deal anchored by his equity in New York and Florida real estate were swindled even though their own assessment of Mr. Trump’s real estate valuations was consistent with his and they got their money back with interest. There were no victims. But Judge Engoron knows best. Does any of this make sense?
A theme in the Gospel of John is based on the phrase, “Come and see”. Early followers used it with their friends when they wanted those friends to meet Jesus. It was used by Jesus when potential followers wanted to know what he was about. “Come and see.” A French poet in the last century made a similar point.
“See what you see.”
It is a bit like,
“Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”
What did Jesus and the French philosopher mean? How about, “When you are confronted with a strange shift in circumstances and worldview, understand what is going on – don’t ignore the obvious signs. See what you see.”
A recent example. In March 2020, governments around the world were calling for a two-week shutdown of the world to “flatten the curve”. Think about that. The commerce of the world was to be shut down for a catch phrase that no one really understood. What curve and how flat? I was stunned by what was being proposed and spent too much time on Facebook arguing with friends and random acquaintances about the absurdity of what was being proposed.
“The government has the experts, and we must trust them.”
I had just left a government job and understood only too well that the last expert you want to trust is one from the government. Civil servants have many redeeming qualities but being experts in anything other than being civil servant is generally not one of those qualities.
Remember that perhaps the best Petrie dish, double blind study of covid-19 was carried out on a cruise ship in the north Pacific. The 3711 passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess, quarantined at Yokohama, Japan for the month of February 2020, were fully tested to determine that 712 had contracted covid resulting in between 7 and 14 deaths (the cause of death for 7 passengers is disputed). There were 17 other cruise ships that were similarly stricken with covid before the end of March 2020. The world was being shut down knowing that only 20 percent of people exposed to covid would contract the disease and between 0.2 and 0.4 percent of the total population would die. And those who died would be the ancient and the already seriously ill.
The ”experts” knew that covid-19 was not a particularly serious illness and perhaps was more benign than the seasonal influenza. But this would not do. To change the narrative, our governments trotted out Neil Ferguson and his model suggesting mortality rates would be up to 4 percent of the total population. Neil Ferguson who was, at that time, famous for creating nonsensical epidemiological model results and who was soon to be discredited for ignoring the covid rules to pursue his affair with a married woman.
The final statistics and tally sheets for the covid-19 pandemic mimic those of the Diamond Princess – as was to be reasonably expected. So why were those who tried to point this out so ruthlessly shut down? Dr. John Ioannidis, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Martin Kulldorf… probably the most renowned epidemiologists in the world became victims of government shaming.
“Blessed are your eyes because they see.”
“See what you see.”
There were lots of things to see yet governments everywhere decided to shut down their economies. Families were no longer allowed to see parents and grandparents in old folk’s homes and hospitals. Churches could not meet other than in beer and bingo halls. Workers would be furloughed and placed on government wage programs. Thousands died of intubation and Remdesivir. No one would be able to travel except at government sufferance – ArriveCAN. Worldwide excess mortality due to government programs has recently been estimated at 17 million.
How was all this to be financed? The 18th century fraud of John Law was resurrected, the printing presses were turned on, and the money flowed… oh how it flowed. Who will pay for this profusion of inflation-inducing monetary cancer?
In late March 2020, I eliminated my Facebook account and sat down with my wife to have a conversation about where we should move and how to ensure that our children and their families came with us and remained intact during the upheaval. We looked with some seriousness at several alternatives but finally decided that where we were was likely the best place to be.
Socially, there was a high degree of doubt over the response to covid and so opportunities to fight the increasingly Maoist government tyranny would increase. Our family owned enough land to grow the food required to support ourselves and we had already unplugged enough to have our own community, church, and medical support. Banking was another issue, but we hoped for the best and that the best wouldn’t involve cryptocurrencies which we didn’t understand. Throughout this time of re-evaluation, we were aware of the potential for landing in Port Stanley on the eve of the Falklands War.
All this is to say that I was seriously alarmed by the events of spring 2020. In my view, this was not a case of government overreach. This was an attempted Marxist take-over of the West to enforce a fascist rule by a self-selected aristocracy. Read up on China’s Cultural Revolution to compare and contrast that murderous rampage with the covid experience. Read up on the post-1933, Reichstag fire events in Germany and look for commonalities.
I realize that this places me in the category of Christian Nationalist nutcase. But ever since the 1992 Balkans War, I have been aware of the increasing tendency of those in the Western media to lie egregiously about whatever happens to be coming out of their mouths at any given moment. It tends to raise suspicions. I have decorated that tendency to instant suspicion as “seeing what I see”. Philosophically it gets me through the day. And I find I am in good company. No less than Alexander Solzhenitsyn argued about how to self-protect against the corrosive evil of Soviet lies.
“See what you see” he said, in effect. If such evil stalks the land, then this can only mean that there is a countervailing force of infinite good. In the middle of his gulag tenure, he became a Christian purely based on this conclusion and the witness of the Christians who dug the unnecessary trenches beside him.
My wife and I recently binge watched “Downton Abbey” – quite possibly the best television series ever produced in my mind. At one point, the arch and at times evil, but ultimately good Mary ponders the wisdom of continuing to maintain the Abbey. The constant financial pressure was wearing her down and she dreamed of living a simpler life in a simpler home. She finally began to see what she saw when she understood the importance of the connections to the thousands of other people who relied on a viable Abbey. She therefore determined to fight on.
And that is the point of all this. I had given up on the willingness of Canadians to fight against what I concluded was a Marxist takeover of the government. I wanted to cut and run. A couple of years later, a ragtag group of truckers honked horns and destroyed, at least for the moment, the momentum of the anti-democratic experiment. It was a sobering and exciting realization. Again, I was forced to see what I saw.
Here is a prediction.
The attempts to destroy Donald Trump are failing and, in spite of continued ballot cheating, I think he will become the next president of the United States. In doing so, the Ukraine and Gaza projects will be wrecked. The many CIA outposts around the world will be rolled up. Many of the 800 US military stations around the world will be closed. Economies may soon suffer when the bill for trillions of newly minted dollars comes due. The US southern border will be closed, and the twenty million illegal immigrants (“newcomers”) will be expelled.
Do we really think that this will be done without a lot of violence? In the summer of 2020, the United States exploded in a fury of Antifa and Black Lives Matter violence. Since then, millions of fit, military-aged men have infiltrated the country. No one knows where these people are. What could go wrong?
Here is the point…
See what you see. But don’t be frightened by what you see. Be determined to keep the Abbey going. There is rough weather ahead but that is what makes life fun. The guy who landed in the Falklands was immediately pressed into service as a radio technician and later he laughed about the experience.
Blessed are your eyes because they see.
This is both terrifying and reassuring, as your apocaloptimism usually is. But, “see what you see”…after all the many excellent BBC miniseries that you mocked your way through, Downton Abbey is the winner? Life never ceases to be surprising! I guess I will have to rewatch (and finish) it.
My thoughts over the past few years are similar to yours. There were a few countries I had previously looked at for retirement but every one of them has deteriorated just as Canada has in terms of freedom of bodily autonomy. I don't know what the future holds, but the globalist agenda is everywhere today. The best option is local relationships and business as much as possible. I'll cross all those other bridges when/if I need to.