A Time of Hope

Over the past four years, trust in all the systems that were supposed to make modern life run smoothly has been steadily eroded, even to the point of utter collapse. At the same time, we find ourselves strangely optimistic about the future. 

We have been amazed as we watched basically the entire medical profession buy into some nutty things (masking as protection against viruses, which they know doesn’t work, as well as the completely arbitrary 6-foot social distancing rules). In fact, the medical profession as a whole seems to have bought into the nonsense at a degree nearly impossible to fathom.

Same with many religious institutions. Many Catholics never thought they would see the day when the Catholic Church leadership (for the most part) decided to hide inside their own homes and rectories during a “pandemic,” rather than heroically going out and providing the sacraments, help, and care to those affected.

In 2,000 years of history, was there a time before this when the clergy stayed in their closed churches during times of plague and let their parishioners die alone and be buried without funerals?

It has been the same with property rights, which were attacked at their root with mandates, rent moratoria, wild spending, and inflation of the money stock. 

We went through a time when it was apparently completely “unsafe” to gather in large groups, such as religious gatherings, but it was completely fine for hordes of people to demonstrate, loot, and wreak havoc on various cities around the country (and the world). 

It was a clear signal that what the media and our “leaders” were saying was not true. Also, it seemed that non-US citizens entering our country illegally had no need for all those annoying rules, while other non-citizens simply wanting to travel to our country for a short business trip couldn’t enter without “showing their papers” until May 12, 2023. 

The federal government was also taking such a hard line on small farmers selling their produce of milk and meat to local customers without the benefit of an FDA inspector giving their blessing on such commerce. Are we to believe that those farmers were, by selling these things to happy customers, endangering the lives of said customers? Those same products were perfectly fine for farmers to share with others if they were giving them away – it seems like the part that makes them really dangerous is the fact that they were receiving payment.

We learned that saving Democracy involved the upper echelons of power making some tough decisions in order to better serve their constituency. When it became painfully obvious that the presidential candidate of choice was too far gone to continue to run (even with all the helpful media, teleprompters, carefully curated events, etc.), in order to “save Democracy,” they had to make the tough decision to convince Biden to step down from his candidacy. 

Therefore, they had no choice but to choose a person from the administration to run in his place (without worrying about the voting public putting in their two cents). 

But apparently, even though he was not really “as sharp as ever” when it came to running for four more years, he was fine to continue being the guy with his finger on the nuclear button through the end of his term of office. 

As time went on, it has become nearly impossible to ignore the fact that so many things we were told have become so obviously incorrect. 

Even now, we are just getting some more information about how testing data was covering up some known problems with the mRNA tech. 

The lack of proper testing for risks to pregnant women and their babies was not uncovered until much later when Pfizer had to turn over data in response to a Freedom of Information request. 

The risk of myocarditis among (especially) young men was not disclosed when the recommended jabs were given. And, quite surprisingly, we have now learned that horse dewormer is actually a very good treatment for many types of human illnesses – among them being coronaviruses. 

Many of us learned some surprising things. Did you know that certain things you buy are completely protected from liability? 

Perhaps we were just not paying attention, but we always had that underlying thought that if you were harmed by a product of any type you could potentially recover damages from the maker of that product if you suffered serious harm when it wasn’t brought on by your own negligence. 

Even for people who have never been party to a lawsuit, there was the assumption that a potential lawsuit had the effect of providing all of us with protection above any level of government regulation. Sellers of products want to provide us with safe products, not only to make us happy, repeat customers, but also to protect themselves from potential liability.

It seems like that is a sort of social contract we all have in a free society. 

But many of us discovered that Big Pharma companies are protected from liability when they are saving civilization from terrible pandemic threat by producing minimally-tested new treatments for lab-produced new viruses (imagine the National Anthem being played when you think of this wonderful enterprise). This was all under the guise of the virus being a bioweapon – thus the control of the entire operation by the military.

And, it all really does make sense, doesn’t it? We couldn’t expect sensible businesses to produce such risky products if they could be sued over injuries.

One thing that still boggles the mind is the idea of sacrificing the health and future of children for their elderly relatives. At what time in history do you remember the adults of a society being willing to risk their children in the hope that it would grant the elders of society a few more months of life? 

They were clearly aware that the virus that was reportedly a huge threat to the elderly was virtually no threat at all to the health of normal children. It was known early on that those who were dying were typically very old and very sick, with many comorbidities. At no time was it ever reported that young kids were dying in droves. In fact, the myth of asymptomatic spreading of the disease was put out perhaps as a way to make us really afraid of little kids.

Throughout human history, there are reports of parents and grandparents sacrificing themselves for their children. This time around, we were sacrificing our kids for the adults!

So, why are we hopeful?

It is because all of these things have worked together to form a group of people who are working to make all of this better. Perhaps we are better off for having had the past four years from which to learn.

It is such a strange coalition, really. There is President Trump, who still firmly believes his Operation Warp Speed (OWS) saved millions of lives and that he didn’t get enough credit for his strong leadership. And let’s grant him his due: one of his strengths is his willingness to go against standard procedure to solve problems. Had this energy been directed in a better way, it would have indeed saved millions of lives. 

Even while he still believes OWS to have been a huge success, it didn’t stop him from welcoming people with completely different points of view to work with him in the new administration. Can you imagine a stranger partnership than Trump and RFK, Jr? And yet, they have agreed to work together to not only work towards the goals Trump has (particularly involving securing borders and bringing back jobs to the US), but also to make the tent big enough to encourage RFK, Jr. to help bring health back to American food and drugs and giving him the power to try to do so. 

The reports are that, for the first time in a long while, no lobbyists are involved in the selection process that is now taking place. We probably all know that lobbyists are some of the most powerful people in DC and that they are NOT working for the good of the US populace. If something they favor does improve the lot of ordinary Americans, it is surely coincidental.

We see that J.D. Vance, who was a strong critic of Trump, has been brought into the tent. We also see Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Bhattacharya, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Kristi Noem all added to his selections. At the same time, we see Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy volunteering their energies to try to work on government efficiency, while using the hilarious acronym DOGE for their organization. 

Who doesn’t love a good sense of humor in all this?

Some speculation on what we can expect:

Perhaps our new DOGE organization can quickly discover a large number of regulations that should be removed from the bureaucracy because of overreach, in accordance with the overturning of the Chevron deference doctrine. Perhaps the Amish farmers can again be free to sell their raw milk and grass-fed meats to the public without risking prison terms and their adherence to their own beliefs will show the way for other dissenters on a whole range of topics. 

Maybe it starts with getting the same food safety standards that big companies have to follow for other countries when it comes to food additives. How is it that additives that are linked to increased risk of cancer are routinely used in our food products (sometimes only to extend the shelf life)? What hidden regulation or application of a regulation allowed this?

Could it be that simply informing the public that the food pyramid we all grew up with is a scam, intended to encourage people to buy more processed foods will help people to change? Maybe a new food pyramid with suggestions on how to improve health could lead to a rollback on the number of Americans suffering with diabetes and other chronic diseases. Perhaps a national effort to encourage people to learn how to cook healthy food in their own homes could be an inspiration to get people to take charge of their own health in a fundamental way.

Maybe in terms of health care, we simply reinstate the ideas of informed consent and the standard of care that were embedded in the medical care of yesteryears. 

After all, perhaps many young women who had miscarriages after taking a recommended treatment would have declined that treatment if they had been informed beforehand that it was known to be related to miscarriages during testing of the treatment (you know what treatment is meant here, right?). Perhaps many young men (who were at virtually no risk of death from the virus) would have opted out if they knew it could lead to heart problems. 

Maybe all those employers who jumped on board with mandatory jab requirements wouldn’t have fired all those non-compliant employees and wouldn’t now be facing lawsuits for unlawful actions.

Maybe we take a truly merit-based approach to our military going forward, with physical fitness requirements that are based on what is needed for the performance of the type of job and are not different based on the gender of the person. Those in combat roles who may need to physically assist a fellow soldier (including pulling such a person out of harm’s way and carrying that person to safety) need to be able to do that. We cannot have units made up of a subset of people who could never really assist a fellow soldier in a case like that. The physical requirements should be the same, regardless of sex, in order to perform the duties. 

Alternatively, if the military person’s MOS is primarily administrative, and it is not likely that they would ever be needed to perform the same type of duties as combat personnel, their physical fitness requirements should be perhaps less rigorous and, again, not based on gender. 

Perhaps we can expect movement on the topic of tech censorship, which is ongoing, still being pushed by agencies, and a bigger problem than ever now that it runs on AI. 

We have a few very hard things that will be difficult to correct. One of the most concerning is the massive national debt, inflation, and slow economic growth. We are perhaps not the worst, as many of our allies are in even worse shape, but that doesn’t remove the huge risk we face for economic collapse. 

We can hope that a rise in domestic industry will be encouraged by the new administration, including an increase in the use of sensible small nuclear energy reactors, negotiating with trading partners with all the tools we have available, including tariffs, and more use of our own natural resources by sensible regulation. However, we are really on the precipice. 

We don’t expect that we’re in for all things glorious the moment the new leaders take office. It took lifetimes to build up all this lovely bureaucracy, so it will take a good bit of time to knock at least some of it off. However, with the enthusiasm we see among the new appointees, the sheer brain power and guts among them, and the huge potential for future greatness, we cannot help but hope things will be better.

There is at last a case for hope. Maybe. Regardless, there is proof at last that our voices matter, that our loss of faith can turn toward rebuilding, that the public mind does matter after all, that perhaps the people can take back power and get their lives back. That’s a high hope but it seems possible after all.