Brandon Didn't Kill Himself

 

“Let’s Go, Brandon” is the new “Epstein didn’t kill himself.” Each is creole for normal people to convey that the Approved Story is an obvious lie.

Having watched the video several times, I genuinely cannot tell if that NBC reporter misheard the crowd wishing crude intimacy upon Joe Biden, or if she was attempting to edit reality like some Baghdad Brandon.

But really, does it matter?

Truth has no place in their world. Whether through their cloistered benightedness or enforced falsehoods, those who mean to rule us only see, and tolerate, their side of the story.

Perhaps like you, I had not heard much about Jeffrey Epstein until after his death. I knew vaguely of a wealthy guy with a demonic face who had the goods on many important people. One might be forgiven for such a tale blending in with all the others in this day and age.

But when, as America’s highest-profile prisoner, he turned up dead of apparent suicide, I felt my intelligence being insulted.

The Official Version posits that the jailer fell asleep – which only happens in cartoons, incidentally – whereupon Epstein activated his FastPass to Hell.

Right from the start, we see we’re in trouble with the story. We cannot even address the question of suicide or murder when we begin with a snoring Barney Fife. If the latter, did the assassin send in the Pirates of the Caribbean dog to snatch the keys and make his entrance?

And what of the surveillance footage? Free citizens cannot order a cheese sandwich without being videotaped from every angle, but the guy supposedly capable of bringing down Gates, Roberts, the Clintons, et al. (if only) was somehow out of frame?

Consequently, millions of us who otherwise would have left unremarked the untimely departure of a dreadful person seized upon “Epstein didn’t kill himself” as shorthand for, “You people are such awful liars.”

It’s not just that they lie to us, it’s that they give us zero credit for discernment.

The past couple years in particular, they have stacked one falsehood upon another, like Richard Dreyfuss building a mountain of mashed potatoes.

However you voted, the 2020 election was an obvious absurdity with a plainly manufactured result. You may despise Donald Trump and rejoice that he is gone (for now, anyway), but to assert that Joe Biden lost Florida and Ohio by landslides, along with 18 of 19 bellwether districts and 15 House seats, yet somehow won Georgia, Arizona, and overcame a 750,000-vote deficit in Pennsylvania in the dead of night, shattering Barack Obama’s national vote total record, is to demean us both.

People know this, even without quantitative deep dives and earth-shaking MyPillow revelations. Precisely because it is so obvious, thou canst not say it for fear of cancellation or othering.

But you know what you can say? “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

Of course, the ubiquitous, euphemistic chant is not entirely, or even primarily, about the election farce. It’s about all of it.

Indeed, if Joe Biden, who has been running for everything but cover his entire life, had kept a low profile, we may have let him sneak onto the roster of presidents with little more than a roll of our eyes. But the country-snatching fraud last November was merely a precursor to the “Your body, my choice” policy of the powers that be. Biden himself is clearly a cipher for whatever truly nasty Epstein-types are running things.

This brings us, of course, to the Church of Covid, which is a Notre Dame of nonsense.

Once again, people plainly see that stories don’t add up. Whether it’s death rates, the conflation of “cases” and “infection,” the shifting definitions of “vaccine,” or the mounting anecdotal evidence that the sacred injections are doing as much or more harm to those in their orbit than the disease, the official narrative is a jumble that cannot be reconciled with itself, much less withstand outside scrutiny.

And no one talks about healing or making people feel better anymore, do they? All is control, submit, obey.

When asked by fearful friends whether they will throw up barriers to interstate travel, or go door-to-door, rounding up the Covid non-compliant and putting them in camps, I reply that there is no limit to what they will do, if they are allowed. Even those responsible do not appreciate the insatiable appetite for power they have indulged.

From Moses to Milton to modern times, we are taught that man’s compulsion to rule is the nature of Hell itself.

A number of Internet commenters have proposed that the next World War will be between people and their own governments. Upon reading this, the penny dropped for me. I have nothing whatsoever against the people of China, Russia, Iran, what-have-you, and I hope and expect the feeling is mutual (until they get to know me, anyway).

I do not doubt, however, that Joe Biden and the ghastly people round about him – some publicly known, some not – wish me ill.

Wherever you find yourself reading this – the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom – do you see any limit to your leaders’ ambitions? Have they not violated the most intimate realms of society and bodily autonomy, all the while making clear they will not stop until forced to do so?

If, as those denizens of the interwebs have averred, the next global conflict is between we the people and our would-be rulers, perhaps “Let’s Go, Brandon!” will be recalled like the cheerful songs at the start of the Great War, with impromptu football matches between the trenches and promises to be home by Christmas 1914.

If you are anything like me, you have never harmed another person in your life, nor would you dream of doing so. But like any tolerant, patient, handsome man, I have my limits. We all have people and things that we love, and spaces that belong to us alone. Liars and tyrants trespass them at their peril.

For now, mockery of our Naked Emperors (possible band name) in the shared language of the oppressed gives us a reason to smile. Those have been few on the ground for some time, and it reminds us we are not alone. We must never stop taunting them until our throats are sore and our ribs ache from laughter.

Let’s Go Brandon, indeed.

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Liberals Will Win if They Can, Steal if They Must

When a situation does not make sense, it is often because you are missing something. A piece of the puzzle has slipped under the sofa and, without it, the picture is incomplete.

Canadians find themselves in such a circumstance now, struggling to discern why Justin Trudeau's Liberals have forced an election at this moment. Polls do not seem especially in their favour, there is no proximate issue that demands ratification by the voters, and recent health concerns have permitted them to wield their minority government as though it were a majority anyway.

So why now?

Some have suggested that there is dreadful, scandalous news on the horizon and the Liberals wish to get an election out of the way beforehand. But this misunderstands the nature of partisan politics. Liberals and Democrats are not undone by scandal as right-leaning politicians are. Ted Kennedy killed a girl and never lost an election.

Others suggest the Liberals' own polling shows them in a stronger position than we might suspect. This seems unlikely. One of the very few things on which Canadians currently agree is that no one wants an election right now, and we all know this one is a Liberal initiative.

I rise to propose an alternate theory: They plan to cheat.

To claim there is chicanery in electoral politics is as banal as observing that birds go tweet; to say it of left-wing operatives is even moreso. Theirs is a godless religion, wherein the cause is all and truth is, at best, a means to an end. With minds focused ever on power, perhaps they see an opportunity in this moment that more honest people might overlook.

When I first bandied this inchoate theory about, people seemed to agree in principle that something seemed off, but none of us could quite figure what it was. Alas, that missing puzzle piece.

Then came news that, while about 50,000 vote-by-mail ballots factored into the last federal election, around 5 million are anticipated this time around. This opens all kinds of space for mischief. Moreover, there is precedent that is nearby and recent.

Canada and the United States have much in common. At the moment, both countries are run by imbeciles who are managed by goblins. Both countries have also permitted their societal norms, including the way in which elections are run, to be upended by the recent health concern noted above.

For purposes of time and clarity, I do not wish to dwell on the recent US presidential election, except to say that the official interpretation, which we are obliged to repeat under threat of social media excommunication, is laughable on its face. While it is possible, theoretically, that Joe Biden won fair and square, the narrative of votes-by-mail, broken water pipes, and sleepy poll-workers in six different cities needing to call it a night and stop counting is absurd.

Whatever happened, we can agree that the circumvention of election norms to accommodate public health was a boon to the current occupant of the White House.

Those who know Canada appreciate that a smug, harmless tic of its people is to insist that whatever injustices or enormities occur in the United States could never happen here. Americans have no idea they are being slighted, and the uncontested win gives Canadians a jolt of pride.

In this case, whatever weirdness happened in the US election is unlikely to play out the same in Canada, but the will to power of our left-wing class is the same as theirs. And that will finds a way.

Five million votes go a long way in Canada. Allocated cleverly, away from prying eyes and in feasible numbers, they could sway any number of seats to win the day. And the mail-in ballots are perhaps not the only means the Liberals have in mind to secure the result.

The one and only time I ran for federal office, more than twenty years ago, Liberal poll-watchers in some precincts shouldered their way in such that they were hand-counting the ballots themselves. It made no difference to the result of our race. In most Toronto ridings, Conservatives could run the Risen Christ and finish no better than third.

But such behaviour, and perceived entitlement to power, is how they roll.

Not being a Liberal, I do not spend my days contemplating how I can attain control over my fellow man. Consequently, the lack of further suggestions as to how they might cheat is a failure of imagination on my part. I can, however, propose how it might look on Election Day and thereafter.

Ridings that seem lost to the Liberals may suddenly swing back into the fold. Of course, this sort of thing happens in every election, but the number, timing, and placement will seem strange. Mailed ballots, late counting, and convenient, peculiar delays could break in one direction; too frequent to be natural, but too subtle to be proved.

In the weeks following a surprise Liberal victory, those raising questions about the election and its result will be labeled “divisive” and “conspiracy theorists.” They will be told to “move on” and we “have a country to run” and “you lost, get over it.”

The opposition robbed of victory – Conservatives, most likely – would be less than no help in the effort, reverting to form as affable losers and attacking their own supporters for being impolite.

I have known Erin O’Toole for about a dozen years. Outside of personal friendship, I can think of no reason to vote for him. On the issues that keep me up at night – freedom and personal sovereignty – he is either mute, or repeats some lighter version of the Liberals’ policy. As they say, leftists want socialism now, while conservatives want it in two weeks.

But what he does have going for him – and I cannot stress this enough – is he is not Justin Trudeau. Observing the prime minister’s domineering conduct the past 18 months, while in possession only of minority status, one shudders to imagine what totalitarian horrors he would unleash with a 4-year majority mandate.

It would be delightful if all this worry were for naught – a waste of my time to write, and yours to read – and we awake to a new, non-Liberal government, beyond the margin of mischief. Like millions of Canadians, nothing would make me happier than to have Justin Trudeau out of my face forever.

But from the moment I first saw him mincing onto the public stage, I sensed that Justin, like some inoperable tumor, was a condition I would have to live with for the rest of my days.

Maybe the Liberals have made a massive mistake in triggering this election. Could they be that dumb? Justin manifestly is, but the ghouls around him are not.

Theo Caldwell is a dual Canadian-American citizen who wishes the governments of both countries would stay out of his kitchen. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Jabber's Remorse

People want to feel good about choices they have made, particularly if they are irreversible. This helps explain a mistake that I and others made in assuming people would, in the main, migrate from accepting Covid madness to embracing freedom.

That hypothesis did not account for the effect of these shots.

Many, if not most, of the people in my orbit who have allowed themselves to be injected have done so for reasons other than health. Perhaps their employer forced them to do it, or they wish to travel, or they want to be sure they can attend some Bay City Rollers reunion concert.

Maybe it was just good, old-fashioned peer pressure.

Whatever the reason, these are not unintelligent or illiterate people (in most cases) and so they have been aware for some time that, outside of a specific and identifiable cohort, Covid is not a mortal threat. This has been the finding of official sources the world over, yet for some reason people still get huffy when you bring it up.

To wit, unless you are elderly, obese, or have some serious underlying condition, Covid almost certainly will not kill you. Moreover, you may have had it and recovered without ever knowing it.

Why, then, inject one’s self with some brand spanking new concoction, the long-term effects of which are unknowable, and for which the short-term effects – again, according to official sources that will nonetheless ruin a pleasant evening to cite – are not good?

And why demand that everyone on the planet do as you have done?

Are they Eve, making damn sure Adam eats that apple, too? It is an honest question, difficult to answer, as the personality and perspective shift in the recently injected makes them unreliable interlocutors.

For example, a neighbor of mine was, until recently, all over social media, complaining about this or that demented Covid dance we have all been obliged to perform. You know the sort of thing – you can no longer just go to the bakery; you have to call ahead, wait in the parking lot, be signaled from the doorway, run and touch the hood of the assistant manager’s Thunderbird with your elbow, hop on one foot and recite the Gettysburg Address before you can receive your marble rye, which is fired at you from a stadium t-shirt cannon.

She was funny, despite her exasperation, and clear-eyed in seeing this madness for what it is. Then she got the shot.

Her stated reason for doing so had nothing to do with health. She is planning a vacation and did not want to have to quarantine on arrival. That was it. And it was enough to make her a different person.

Suddenly, every bit of insanity was for our safety, and anyone who did not follow her example was an “anti-vaxxer.” It was as though her former self did not exist and, most alarmingly, she in no way acknowledged the person she once was or the beliefs she previously held.

I am struggling with judging people who have taken these injections, not because I know what the effects will be (I do not, and neither do you, whoever you are) but because of their reasons for doing so and the way they are acting towards everyone else.

It is not a question of intelligence or knowledge, since the former is relative and the latter is impossible at this early stage. But the about-faces and insults coming from the newly jabbed are worrisome.

Many people are smarter than I am. You may well be one of them. But the people I see on my Facebook feed calling everyone else idiots are…not.

This is one of those instances, like finance and the Middle East, where those with an interest want you to believe it is oh-so-complicated and you could never, ever understand it. But in reality, when reduced to its essence and stripped of jargon, the concept is rather simple. The questions become bite-sized, even binary.

For example, as alluded to above, how can people be certain about the long-term effects of these injections when they have only been available for a matter of months? Again, it is an honest question and, if at all possible, I would like an answer more substantive than, “Shut up, bigot!”

How about politicians and media figures who, when one person was President of the United States, loudly proclaimed they would never accept these rushed, suspect injections but, now that someone else has the job, insist you must accept the jab or you can never go to Arby’s again? (Deal, by the way)

As the kids say, what’s up with that?

You don’t need a lab coat to see the discrepancy here, nor does it make you a Q-Anon nutcase to wonder aloud. Anyone with a calendar and a television can spot the inconsistencies.

The clanging illogic and head-patting maternalism were evident when the Centers for Disease Control announced in December 2020 that the injections were perfectly safe for pregnant women. How could they possibly know that? With one administration on its way out and one more friendly to the bureaucracy on the way in, had that changed things?

Those of us asking these questions are not trying to be contentious for its own sake. This is a discussion we feel is worth having but the Hyde-turn and invective coming from the other side make that increasingly difficult.

We have seen this before. Covid is the new “climate change.” Questioning conventional wisdom is met with accusations, insults, and demands to know where you matriculated.

But despite the coming and going of every drop-dead doomsday foretold by Al Gore, Prince Charles, and the Mayan Calendar, we remain well above sea-level.

Set questions aside for the moment, then, and let us agree, if we can, that there is much we simply do not know. Perhaps that explains some of the panic and hostility.

My body-snatched neighbor was, in her telling, something of a party girl in her youth. She laughs off concerns about the injections by saying she’s taken a lot of naughty things in her life. But, as she surely knows, this is not like getting a dicey batch of edibles.

For good or ill, this is for life. In her case, as in many others, she accepted a bargain in exchange for getting her freedoms back. But with variants, boosters, and shifting goalposts the world over, and no talk of normalcy returning, the deal seems to be off.

She is left, then, with this mystery concoction within her for the rest of her days. That may be a good thing. It may give her telepathic superpowers, for all we know. But it may also end badly, and for what? Ostensibly, for protection from a disease which, in her case, was as likely to cause death as a freak folding-couch accident (no one ever thinks it will happen to them).

All of this is before we get to the more recent questions; the ones that will most definitely get you kicked out of a family gathering (although that may not be a problem soon; want to bet that those of us who celebrate Christmas will have to do so with the curtains closed again this year?).

What about these “fully vaxxed” hospitalizations in the UK, Israel, Iceland, and elsewhere? Are these shots weakening natural immunity, especially in people previously infected with Covid? When the injected encounter the virus naturally, will it hit them harder, as happened in animal testing? What role have the injections played in facilitating these lettered variants? And what about these side effects that, despite Zuckerberg's best efforts, are being reported in large numbers? (I lead an active lifestyle, so blindness, amputation, heart failure and death would put a crimp in my weekend plans.)

I do not have these answers, nor do I pretend to. I am asking in good faith.

Before I accept an irreversible treatment, on pain of having to order my groceries online, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for straight answers.

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

All is Lost (Maybe)

 

In his seminal book on screenwriting, Save the Cat, Blake Snyder posits that near the end of a good script, the protagonist should arrive at a moment where all seems lost. Our hero’s ambitions are not only dashed, but he is worse off now than when the movie started.

Ideally, per Snyder, this is followed by a dark night of the soul, during which the hero must face up to his failures. Suddenly, help arrives, often in the form of friends the protagonist made or something he learned earlier in the film, leading to a triumphant and satisfying finale.

Snyder cites examples as eclectic as Star Wars, Elf, Miss Congeniality and “Christ on the cross” to illustrate the power of that penultimate moment when death and darkness are all around.

For me, as for most educated people, the ideal cinematic All is Lost instance comes when Daniel LaRusso is THIS close to forfeiting the All Valley Karate Championship but convinces Mr. Miyagi to do that clap-hands healing move on his leg, then remembers the crane technique he had seen him practicing on the beach. The science is settled.

Many have supposed that what we are living through feels like a movie, or perhaps a Black Mirror episode, as it is so bleak and unreal. Whether or not the Lizard People are huddled in some writers’ workshop in Davos, typing out our future with their tongues and tails, those of us who value freedom could be forgiven for believing that, at this moment, All is indeed Lost.

As I type (with fingers), governments and corporations the world over are imposing barriers to travel, employment, commerce, and daily life. The ostensible purpose of these infringements is to force people to accept injections, and then carry physical and digital proof that they have done so.

To anyone capable of seeing more than one move ahead, it is the second part of that proposition that is most troubling. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the contents of these syringes are the best possible thing one could have coursing through one’s veins. Let us further suppose that the disease they are meant to mitigate makes smallpox look like a Plantar Wart.

This remedy – if one can call it that – will render every human being traceable, trackable, and permitted to function only at the sufferance of official authority. Moreover, as with all Covid measures nowadays, no sunset date or endgame is mentioned or contemplated. “15 Days to Flatten the Curve” sounds as anachronistic and truthful as “Remember the Maine!”

I maintain a Facebook account largely for purposes of anthropological study. It allows me to observe the meanderings of the dimmest people from my past, many of whom I forgot I knew. Without exception, they are whole hog for this idea, describing anyone who differs or seeks delay in the vilest possible terms, without stooping to consider what reasons we may have.

An especially gobsmacking recent example is a photo of those old, yellow vaccination cards we had for school, captioned with, “You’ve had a Vaccine Passport your whole life, so what’s the big deal?”

Now, my cohort and I are half a century into this material experience. Even the most meticulous hoarders among us would be hard-pressed to put their hands on that old thing. But that is hardly the point, is it? That document was a record of decades-old inoculations against deadly and crippling diseases, required for admission to a few, specific places (public school, summer camp, etc.).

What is now being proposed is a comprehensive, inescapable, digital monitor that tracks your every move, and is a requirement for the essentials of daily life. So yes, I suppose I did have a yellow card at some point, but I did not need to carry it as a condition of buying food or leaving my home.

My acquaintances championing this have never known privation in the least degree and so they see freedom as some right-wing fetish. They do not know it is the air they breathe but, like oxygen, they will miss it right quick.

Again, the problem is not a scientific disagreement. They aver that everyone should accept these injections – and maybe that is true, or maybe not – but the means they advocate are both worse and larger than the proximate threat itself. They are so blinded by their will to power that they cannot, or will not, contemplate the consequences.

So as this prison is erected around us, applauded with rancid enthusiasm by the dribbling idiots we have known, is All truly Lost?

I think not.

For one thing, the government and corporate overlords mandating this madness are not behaving as though they are winning. They seem panicked. Their worry is not over the disease (is there anyone remaining whose primary fear is Covid itself?), but they are in a race against time.

I believe official vaccination numbers about as much as I believe that pipe burst in Atlanta. Even so, as noted, there are many people eager to be injected and recorded and monitored. But a significant minority, or more, of free-born populations are and will remain unwilling to be jabbed. Even among those who are willing, or have been, many see through to the problem I am describing. In Italy, for example, many citizens have burned their vaccination passes in solidarity with the freedom-minded.

Doubtless, the top people pushing this have held dreadful meetings, possibly by Zoom, peopled by hollow-chested men in problem glasses, insisting they must advance this agenda “as one” (they always uphold uniformity as a virtue). If havens are allowed to exist – businesses or jurisdictions that do not require the tracking of human activity – the scheme perishes.

It is often noted that if these injections were so splendid, there would be no need to threaten and cajole. Similarly, if their goodness were self-evident, and towering majorities of populations were on board, as official numbers suggest, there would be no need to race toward totalitarianism at ludicrous speed.

Further, they really don’t understand us at all. By “us,” I mean not only freedom-loving people, but humans generally. Everything they are proposing, from the perpetual wearing of masks to scheduled injections, digitally policed, is so unnatural that it can only be imposed by overwhelming and sustained force. Now, overwhelming and sustained force is just about their favorite thing, but even they can’t keep it up forever.

We can outlast them. This will be easier for some than for others, as they continue to foreclose aspects of normal life to the non-compliant. I am not the most advanced prepper-survivalist in the world but, as Cliff Clavin once advised, I do keep an inflatable raft and a couple cans of tuna fish in the trunk of my car. Your move, jackwagons.

So, what have we learned, and what friends have we made, such that we may endure this All is Lost moment, through the dark teatime of the soul, and arrive at ultimate victory?

Significantly, we have seen that everything they tell us is untrue. This applies to mortality and vaccination rates, therapies and, most important, the bargains they offer to buy back our freedom.

You may wish to advise the zealous converts in your orbit who announce they are “fully vaxxed” that they are nothing of the kind. With third and fourth boosters already forthcoming, to be mandated as a condition of participation in society, they will discover, to their sorrow, that there is no such thing as “fully vaxxed” in this world and we all fall short of the grace of Fauci.

We have further learned, as alluded to above, that they cannot accommodate or understand non-conformity. To them, freedom is just another word for racist. Ridicule, in particular, scrambles their circuits, and we must up our mockery game. This one is easy for me; as a born smart-alec with no friends, I have plenty to say and nothing to lose.

Beyond wise-ass remarks and scalding prose, I have wondered what I can offer to this struggle. If it is a war, where is my unit and how will I look in the uniform? For now, I think the strongest move is simply to remain firm, to hold out, to say no. The way they are behaving now ought not to be rewarded with compliance.

All the frantic energy is being expended on their side. Let them punch themselves out like Clubber Lang, and then we’ll see where we are.

Then there are the friends we’ve met along the way, who help us to overcome. All over the world, people are finding each other, seeing the truth, and giving one another the courage to stay strong.

Despite the best efforts of Zuckerberg, @Jack, and the gargoyles at Google, people are coming together, sharing their stories, and letting others know they are not alone. The ongoing protests across Europe, hundreds of thousands strong, are just one example. More of this, please.

Taken together, all that we have learned and those we have befriended make for a potent combination. As Mr. Miyagi presaged before Daniel-san delivered the kick to the face that changed history: “If do right, no can defense.”

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

You Are Not Alone

 

The people still wearing masks are the same ones who say “Happy Holidays.” Both are nasty little statements, cloaked in compassion but rooted in control.

In late December, the whole world knows what holiday is coming up, and almost everyone celebrates it in some fashion, regardless of their beliefs. To pretend you’re celebrating Kwanzaa instead, and especially to act as though mentioning Christmas is an offense, is to be a sanctimonious jerk.

Similarly, masks are passive-aggression made cloth. They are a means to signal one’s own virtue, whilst wordlessly judging others and accomplishing less than nothing.

My cursory assessment is that mask-clingers are disproportionately a particular sort of perpetually disturbed woman. That is not to say “disturbed” as in mentally so – although there is that – but always in a mood, disappointed and exasperated with others for not living up to her standards.

Born to rule and wired to complain, you have known her all your life. Playing in the schoolyard, she was the one to call a halt and dictate what the rules ought to be. She has traded her tricycle for a Subaru but she is the same joyless buzzkill, unable to consider simply leaving other people alone.

The Karen Variant arose early in this pandemic (viz., Karenavirus) and no amount of sheltering in place can repel it (although shuttering Starbucks and Nextdoor might be worth a try).

My neighborhood is a leafy, middle class enclave where such women thrive, along with the sort of men they marry. It is a place where, while walking one’s dog, previously unobjectionable people now pull their cars over so they can give you their vaccination testimony. I do not exaggerate. One is repulsed and alarmed by the starry-eyed zealotry of men (males, anyway) bursting to confess that they have accepted Pfizer as their Lord and personal spike protein.

The latest local trend is to put light-up hearts in the front window, replacing the ubiquitous children’s drawings of rainbows, many of which were accompanied by a presumably adorable scrawl of “It’s gonna be ok” or some such.

Well, yes and no. Yes, the proximate cause of this madness – a disease from which you, budding artist, had nothing to fear, either as a victim or a carrier – was certainly ok, and we knew that early on. But no, inasmuch as your unspeakable mother – who puts a mask over your face before sending you out for a “playdate” in the midsummer heat – will not allow it to be ok.

The hearts and the rainbows and the cloying yard signs thanking “front line workers” (presumably posted unironically, despite 16 months of dancing Tik-Tok nurses) are meant to be a vigil until the end of the disease. I rise to propose that if people stopped worshipping this thing, perhaps it would go away.

But of course, they cannot. People need something to worship, and they would rather die roaring than pray to God Himself (these are people who “put it out to the Universe” when they want something). Besides, climate change is so 2012 and Kwanzaa is months away.

I do not wish to add fuel to the insanity, and one hesitates even to write about it, as to do so is to help keep it alive. But there are two reasons I take crayon in hand to opine: First, as we enter the back half of 2021, it is clear that those opposed will not let this go away (more on which below); second, there is a sentiment I know to be true, but I wish were more commonly expressed: You are not alone.

If you are anything like me (and if you have read this far, we probably speak the same language), you look around at a world gone mad and wonder where it will lead. If, again like me, you find yourself surrounded by rainbows and fashionable masks, pulled down only to reveal the fanatical, Heaven’s Gate grins of the recently jabbed, you feel unsteady in your soul.

Almost every form of media adds to the disquiet. Your Facebook feed is a parade of horribles, where people you once respected, or at least could stand, spout off like suburban witch doctors. The guy who ate paste deep, deep into high school is there too, telling everyone within eyeshot to inject themselves with an experimental serum or “unfriend me NOW!”

Be not afraid. This is what it appears to be: temporary madness and mass psychosis.

It is not harmless, and “temporary” can mean rather a long time in human terms (see the Soviet Union), but you are not the crazy one. Moreover, not only are you not alone, but it is at least possible that you are in the majority.

In this Age of Lies, it is nigh impossible to quantify anything with confidence. Polls, election results (ahem), infection, death and vaccination rates are all massaged and tinkered with, if not manufactured outright, to achieve a desired result. It can be exhausting, always having to assess the source and its motivation. The experienced consumer of news is aware that it's almost all stuff and nonsense; the trick is divining the extent and reason for the lies. 

Nevertheless, there is much to be said for common sense. It pierces the mists of deceit, no matter how thick.

My neighborhood of jagged rainbows and creepy grins is officially ranked as "the most vaccinated in Canada." One may therefore conclude that my immediate environs are about as bad as it gets, in terms of smug collectivism. Nowhere to go but up, as it were. 

We few local dissenters hear legends of a place called "Florida" (is that how you pronounce it?), where life is normal and people are free.

One need not go full DeSantis to see that there is a vast range of sanity out there, despite the best efforts of authorities to hide it from view. 

Even in a neighborhood like mine, if you pick one of the Covidians off from the herd (conversationally, that is), you can occasionally draw some sanity out of them. Perhaps they are frustrated at masking Dakota for recycling camp, or they harbor quiet concerns about her future fertility due to the jab. 

It won't last, of course. The next time you encounter your interlocutor, she'll brag about how they just quadruple-vaxxed their newborn in her crib without waking her from her nap, but at least you caught a glimpse of a normal person. 

We are not born with masks on our faces, nor is there a logically cogent reason to inject everyone, and the common man knows this, even if he must quash the thought for purposes of comity.

Such quashing is mandated from on high, but relies on ground-level collaboration. While every position of power is held by proponents of the approved worldview – the "wear your mask, take your jab, eat your bugs" crowd, if you will – they are a small minority.

Not only are they relatively few, but they are an odd sort, rather different from you and me and others obliged to live in the real world. They are the ones who have enjoyed job security even as they closed countless businesses, and who flout the rules they create for you and me (plus ca schoolyard change).

On a human level, they are peculiar people. At the risk of seeming glib, I recall that opening pitch (if one can call it that) hurled by Anthony Fauci last summer at a Washington Nationals game. If you've seen it, you remember. 

It is not my intention to make fun of him – although there is that – but I remain gobsmacked that an adult male, who grew up in America, is incapable of throwing a ball. 

One might excuse it by saying Fauci is elderly, or that he has been too busy "saving lives" to perfect his throwing arm (which raises the awkward question of how long it has been since Fauci treated a patient), but this was more than that.

No one expected Fauci to bring the split-finger heat, but this was not even a proper throw, by any previous definition. It flailed off to one side, traveling nowhere near home plate, and one could easily suppose it was the first time he had ever attempted such a thing.

How can a grown man who does not know how to throw a ball relate to me, much less run my life?

It seems a small thing, and perhaps it is, but it speaks loudly to me.

Again, though - Fauci and people who think as he does control every power center at the moment. From media to education to government and corporate culture, the world is currently one big, uptalking HR department.

With few exceptions, everything you see on your computer, phone, and television (even the blasted commercials) reinforces their worldview. It can therefore be easy to conclude that you are the odd one out and that their vision is inevitable. This is why I take pains to say: You are not alone.

Reality and reason are not on their side. Their numbers do not add up, their stories don't fit together, and you are not crazy for noticing that. This is important to bear in mind, since things are going to get bumpy this fall.

Perhaps you have already encountered this, at work or school. Maybe you have kids heading to college who are being mandated to receive an experimental injection which, by the regime's own logic, they do not need. 

They have been telegraphing like a jonesing Samuel Morse that, while there's not much they can do to clamp us down during summer, as the weather cools and regular cold and flu season returns, they'll be strapping on their winter jackboots.

But like Satan himself, they know their time is short (I doubt either side of that simile has much cause to object). 

They are doing the hard press on college kids because they know this is a vulnerable spot, and a time-sensitive one besides. But a year from now, when they are still trying to gin up panic over the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot variant, and people still have to refer to the tragic death of their sister's neighbor's ex-husband's dogsitter's grandmother who had diabetes and was born during the Taft administration to come up with someone who died of it, how much traction will they get?

Consider for a moment this "vaccine passport" obscenity. In my neck of the woods, they give the jabbed a flimsy little piece of paper as proof of compliance. Even if one does not lose it - and one expects my neighbors frame and pray to theirs like the Shroud of Turin - everyone would have to go back and register themselves in some global database, which we can expect will run about as smoothly as the Obamacare website. 

All of which is to say, these people cannot make this work, they probably know it, so the best they can do is scare you that Madison will miss a semester of Gender Studies if you don't hop to.

Much is supposed about why they are doing all this. Is it for money? Mass sterilization? Control?

The answer is unknowable because there is more than one (they are Legion, if you will).

People making and selling jabs certainly have a pecuniary motive. Those who want everyone injected, whether they need it or not – whether it harms them or not, in fact – are indulging in the all-too-human impulse for power over others. The chief aim of the state is to make its citizens legible, which explains the desire for a centralized health and vaccination database. Finally, there is much to be said for the warm comfort of conformity, coupled with the opportunity to hurt and sneer at those who disobey. 

What you will notice about the above list is that none of the motivations are to your benefit. I do not include a genuine concern for the health of one's fellow man on the list because, at this point, with so many absurd narratives and documented harms of this medical tyranny, I no longer believe it to be possible. 

But like Prohibition, the tulip craze, or tying an onion to your belt, this madness cannot last. 

We are not alone, and our task is to outlast them. They will not quit until they have to, and we never will. 

Be prepared, be hopeful, and stay strong. The next few months will be a challenge. They will almost certainly try to cancel Christmas (again) but, if the police come knocking, just tell them you're celebrating Kwanzaa. 

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

Variants of Stupidity

 

The smartest people I know never call anyone else stupid. Perhaps they are just intelligent enough to recognize how much they have to learn.

Conversely, the most appalling mouth-breathers of my acquaintance are quick to accuse others of imbecility for no better reason than being at odds with their precise opinion. Little knowledge being a dangerous thing, they lash themselves to the mast of the first fact they hear, particularly if it confirms their preferences, and cling to it like grim death.

Like most people, I consider myself somewhere between those two groups; in the parlance of Costanza, not showing off, not falling behind, right in that sweet spot.

As the threat of Covid, such as it ever was, loses its wind, those who live, breathe, and pray to this happening cast about for ways to keep it alive. Since the approved narrative itself does not hang together – the same cohort who cautioned against wearing masks last year now insist they are the talisman to salvation, you must prove your goodness by injecting yourself with an experimental “vaccine” that is nothing of the sort by any previously held definition, etc. – adherents must seal off parts of their minds to contain their demons of doubt.

“Variants of concern” is a recent formulation, meant to convey a sense of next-level danger. But as the sheer illogic of their story accumulates, the willful benightedness of those who need this nonsense to rouse themselves from bed each morning necessitates variants of stupidity.

For example, I have heretofore enjoyed chit-chatting with an older lady I encounter on my bi-weekly visits to the grocery store. Most recently, however, our discussion turned to the Covid regime – as is the tiresome wont of every conversation nowadays – and the ridiculous cloth on our faces.

Whether this woman was once normal or was always one of them, I do not know, but a slyness slipped into her eyes, as though what she was about to say were gangbusters.

“Okay, BUT – were you sick this winter?”

That was it. She stepped back slightly, as though I needed space to recover. I needed no more than a moment, however, to understand her meaning: While masks may be unnecessary for Covid, they are probably good for something, so we must all wear them indefinitely.

I responded, truthfully, that I am never sick (being Irish, I yearn for death, but my perfect health is a tragic fact), adding that even if her argument were airtight, I do not want to live like this. Off the top of my head, I mentioned recent writings from the CDC, Stanford, and even the New York Times (which I suddenly supposed she might read unironically) averring that masks and “social distance” were performative at most.

“Everyone has their own opinion,” she replied in the sing-song tone one might take with a slow-learning child.

Notwithstanding my place in the sweet spot, noted above, to be patronized by someone of middling intelligence is its own chapter of infuriation.

Perhaps so, I answered, though that is of little practical value, since those of us with differing opinions, no matter how well-founded, are beholden to the opinions of those who demand we cover our faces if we wish to buy food for our families.

“Well, I need to get back to it,” she said. The words were polite enough, but she applied just enough edge to her tone to convey we shan’t speak again.

I am intellectually humble enough to accept I might be wrong about all this. But I suspect what irritated her most was that, on some level, she suspects I am right.

Covid is merely the latest religion for people who believe in nothing. In the tradition of “climate change” and identity politics, it is tailor-made for the jagged, spacey sort who send prayers “out to the Universe” because they’d rather die roaring than say the name of God.

It is often said that this godless religion has no answer for death, and so people are afraid. I waver on this, inasmuch as I see plenty of power-tripping, conformity, and self-satisfaction, but precious little fear.

It is akin to how media reflexively blame this or that recent privation on “the pandemic,” rather than the true culprit of capricious tyranny.

At this point, is anyone primarily afraid of the disease itself? Perhaps some are but, to those with a lick of perspicacity, the chief concern ought to be the medical prison being erected around us.

Covidians are strangers to both purpose and fear, which makes them fanatical. Their role-playing adventure, in which the rest of us are compelled to participate, furnishes them with meaning and power, yet they are no more afraid of death than Barack Obama is of his waterfront mansion slipping into the rising sea.

As each of their tenets is disproved – from masks and distance, as noted, to death rates, dancing Tik-Tok nurses in supposedly overrun hospitals, the notion of “asymptomatic” (previously, “healthy”), and the recently exploded myth of surface transmission – their justifications will mutate as swiftly and dangerously as they claim the virus does.

Each new strain of nonsense will be more absurd than the last, as fewer rational arguments remain available to them. Even so, they will persist, for they can do no other – at least, until some new secular shrine presents itself. When it does, the same people who moved seamlessly from saying you couldn’t use a plastic straw to demanding that everything be covered in plastic, including you, will go and worship there.

Returning to the smartest people I know, albeit subjectively assessed, it is noteworthy that none of them is a medical doctor (with one exception, though he was so brilliant it was as though he earned an MD in his spare time). I myself am not a doctor, nor did I attend an Ivy League school, but I am acquainted with a sufficient number who satisfy one or both of those criteria to know that not only should one not be intimidated by their judgment – one should be outright suspicious of it.

Intelligence and credentials are worse than useless when decoupled from humility and common sense. Medicine, like any other field, requires the marriage of specific training to good judgment. And to it all, there is a bounded rationality. I would no more defer to a doctor on how society should run than allow my mechanic to dictate what times and on which roads I may drive my car.

Some medical professionals understand this perfectly well. Others – some famous and some on Facebook – seem to be enjoying this moment a tad too much.

The upshot remains that if you refuse to accept you may be wrong, allowing ego and power-lust to override reason, no matter how many post-nominals you possess, you may as well sign your name with an X.

Be warned, however: Unintelligent creatures can still be dangerous. A polar bear may be hopeless at arithmetic, but he can still rip your head off. The science is settled.

We are using low intelligence as shorthand to encompass genuinely dumb bunnies as well those who could be smart but refuse to be, but the salient factor is their religious zeal. As with the causes that preceded this one, and whatever follows, they will never cease seeking their personal fulfilment at your expense.

These people, remember, in the explicit terms of the World Economic Forum and other globalist busybodies, want you eating bugs and owning nothing by the end of the decade. They may be ridiculous, but they are still a threat.

Nevertheless, despite the daily discouragements of seeing healthy kids wearing masks in the sunshine, or neighborhood dads to whom I’d have previously considered loaning lawn equipment do the same, I remain optimistic we shall prevail. I have two reasons; one general and one specific.

First, all things, good and bad, must come to an end. The Covid hysteria is one of the great mass delusions in human history (and one could not help be impressed if it were truly planned by Bill Gates and fellow lizard-people, as some suggest) but, whether adored or abhorred, it cannot last forever, for no other reason than nothing made by man or lizard ever does.

Second, the absurdities, indignities, and internal inconsistencies of the Covid regime are impossible to sustain. Resistance and dissent may not appear on mainstream news outlets or your curated social media feed, but they are strong and determined. In cities around the world, massive rallies are regular occurrences. In private moments and everyday rebellions, people demonstrate what they truly believe. As I type, I sit in Canada’s “most vaccinated” neighborhood and yet, even here, outdoor-mask fanatics and my grocery store interlocutor are the exception, not the rule.

They are a large and powerful minority, represented as the only voice in the media we were accustomed to venerate. Even so, the traffic is all one-way. Perusal of my own social media feed will show me wearing a mask over a year ago, long before we were instructed to do so. Now, simply through observation of moving goal posts and shifting narratives, I do not believe a single word of the official Covid story, prepositions included.

Take heart and be not afraid. Time is on our side and, not for nothing, so is the truth.

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com

The Great Resist

 

Call me old-fashioned, but if you choose to speak to me through a cloth covering most of your face, I consider it as disrespectful as being addressed from horseback. Consequently, when neighbors chat me up this way, outdoors in the sun, at a good distance and with no one else about, I feel compelled to mention, pleasantly, that I simply cannot engage in our usual banter if they remain in costume.

Mostly, they peel off their rag and let loose a series of explanations as to why they were wearing it in the first place – they’d just been with people, they forgot they had it on, or some such.

It is not my intention, or my place, to make them uncomfortable or order them about. But in a world where others are permitted to command people as to what words they must use to refer to them, I reserve the right to circumscribe the sort of conversations I will have.

For a time, living as I do in the midst of go-along, get-along liberals who haven’t a clue that legitimate, differing opinions exist, I assumed this would mean a solitary, curmudgeonly existence. But green shoots of normalcy are giving me hope.

It is, as the Richard Harris incarnation of Marcus Aurelius described Rome, a dream you can only whisper. Nonetheless, it is there. It is conveyed in brief exchanges and knowing looks; a sense that people are ready to be done. Covid mania is like a hit song, loved at first but made sickening by too much play.        

There are, of course, Covid fanatics aplenty, and perhaps they will be with us for some time. One sees them on social media and in real life, but their energy is unsustainable and they are too unappealing for their influence to survive. On some level, one senses they know this.

On our street the other day, a nice couple were distributing a free newspaper, advocating an end to lockdowns and getting kids back in schools. They were accosted by a local woman of a certain age, who filled the air of our quiet neighborhood with righteous profanity. She reached her crescendo by screaming at the couple, “You should be SHOT!” (Why is that the go-to for certain people?)

That is not the behavior of someone serenely confident of victory. Nor is it the conduct of a dispassionate believer in science (or “The Science,” as it prefers to be called).

Politicians are a different matter. Thus far, with some pleasing exceptions in Florida and the Dakotas and elsewhere, they are intransigent in their refusal to let this madness die.

But one must remember, for all their deployment of that risible euphemism, “public service,” these are people who got into the racket so they could exercise power over others. Their actions will serve that interest, always. And when the winds change, so will they. For the moment, they suppose this is what people want, and it satisfies their need for control and self-drama.

The mayor of my hometown of Toronto, a pudgy non-entity named John Tory who has all the right opinions, has canceled all city events until at least July 1, the 154^th anniversary of Canada’s founding. Ontario’s premier, meanwhile, a positively corpulent mouth-breather named Doug Ford, has evinced a level of stupidity and malevolence that has shocked his erstwhile supporters, including me. His latest move – on the heels of insulting and threatening his former voting base and canceling Christmas – has been to spend $2.5 million of taxpayer money on wristbands to be worn by citizens, and which will beep if people are fewer than six feet apart.

But as always, the most appalling performance has been turned in by Justin Trudeau, a deeply embarrassing young man who effectively inherited Canada’s leadership from his father.

As is the way of children and leftists, Justin has a cruel streak and lacks proportion. His most recent obscenity is to imprison citizens returning from abroad in hotels for days, while billing them thousands of dollars for the privilege, and transporting them to quarantine internment camps if they test positive for Covid.

To a normal person with reasonable expectations of a free country, the hotel arrangement is horrifying enough. Travelers are spirited from the airport in windowless vans, their families are not told where they are being taken, they are ushered down plastic-lined hallways and locked in rooms for days, unable to leave.

But now, allegations of sexual assault by hotel guards against female travelers have been raised. One would think the government of a self-proclaimed “male feminist” (a red flag if ever there were one) would be outraged and embarrassed that a policy of theirs has led to such a dreadful (yet predictable) result.

Rather, female ministers of Justin’s Cabinet have responded with the government’s robotic and minatory mantra: “Do not travel.”

Again, there will always be ghastly people who think this is a reasonable reply. One sees them in online comments, and their wording is often similar; something like, “I, for one, have ZERO sympathy for these people. You were TOLD not to travel in a pandemic!”

Benighted to the tradition of freedom they inherited, such individuals fail to understand it is not within a government’s remit to tell citizens that they cannot leave the country. But just as there have always been cranks who insist the Berlin Wall was erected to keep West Germans from availing themselves of all the free services in the East, their perception of reality is precisely inverted.

“You were warned” is no kind of governing policy, and it is a positively satanic response to victims of assault.

For those lucky enough to escape the hotel prisons and internment camps, government-funded stalkers have been dispatched to the homes of recent travelers to ensure they are remaining quarantined. In Ontario, one such agent has been charged with extorting a cash “fine” from a female target, and sexually assaulting her.

It is noteworthy that these are merely the stories that have been reported by the mainstream news – a cohort that by and large favors centralization and Covid restrictions. Politicians with a studied, lifelong ignorance of both liberty and human nature have re-created the Stanford Prison Experiment from coast to coast. Normal people see this, at once, even if their leaders do not.

Much of the media criticism of Justin’s Covid-handling focuses on his failure to acquire and distribute the new vaccine. The assumption of major news outlets is that these treatments are an unalloyed good and every reasonable person wishes to receive them as soon as possible.

Certainly, there are many who are eager to be injected. But there is also a widespread and respectable view that the inoculation should be delayed or eschewed, if it is necessary at all.

An experimental injection, mere months in the making, with a suppressed but unmistakable early record of deaths and complications, and which does not protect against infection or transmission, is not a vaccine in any practically understood sense.

A common defense of this new “vaccine” is to point to the improvements in quality of life attained through vaccines of the past. Sorry, but this parvenu does not get to trade on Jonas Salk’s street cred.

Consequently, allow me to go on record that I will never take that jab unless you hold me down and force it on me. Please note that ten to one is not a fair fight; you’re going to need more guys.

And it may come to that. In a world where I am forbidden to travel, where government stalkers will come to my home, and they seek to foreclose routine living unless I present medical papers, anything is possible. Ideologically, at least, I am on a war-footing.

That informs the ad hominem nature of much of this prose. These politicians and their fellow-travelling bureaucrats are not my friends or chummy compatriots with whom I have a policy disagreement. What they are doing, or attempting to do, is anathema to the founding of Western nations and antipathetic to the human spirit. They must be defeated, discredited, and the earth of their careers must be salted so they are never in proximity to power again.

Ironically, it is that matter of medical papers that has given me my greatest source of hope. Doubtless, you have seen news items regarding the supposedly forthcoming “Vaccine Passport,” without which you will be forbidden to travel, shop, or live anything resembling a proper life.

Such stories are ubiquitous and synchronized, to make you feel surrounded. But those green shoots find a way. In this case, they take the form of comments on videos and postings where vaccine advocates have not taken care to curate the responses.

When first I saw this reported, on Irish news last year, the item was positively destroyed in the comments (“ratioed,” as the kids say), without a single peep of support.

This week, in my native Canada, a similar story was broadcast by CTV News, Canada’s answer to CNN inasmuch as you know precisely their view on any given topic, such that one wonders why anyone bothers to watch. They interviewed a “bioethicist” – one of those modern professions that prompts one to ask what that person does all day – who averred that these passports are inevitable.

The reactions were glorious. Everywhere the interview was posted – including on CTV’s own YouTube channel – one could find thousands of downvotes and damning comments, with but a handful of upward thumbs and, as of this writing, not a single voice in favor.

The Great Reset, as you may have heard, is a program whereby nefarious groups, including everyone from the Davos crowd to Bill Gates to the Bay City Rollers, seek to remake the world in an image of their choosing. It is not some imaginary conspiracy, as a number of its proponents openly advocate it. The global legibility and attendant controls of the Vaccine Passport was to be an integral part.

But as with all the plans of those who love people in groups of a million or more, it fails to account for ground-level behavior. Similarly, it does not contemplate next steps.

Just as anyone over the age of 5 can see that locking people in hotels and sending government-deputized stalkers to women’s homes is wrong and will end badly, it should be obvious that grand, life-altering policies will require enforcement.

If a person wishes to do some grocery shopping, must they present their vaccine papers or scan their Ford-issued wristband at the door? Who will guard the entrance – police, private security, or some put-upon hourly worker with a nametag? And how long are we meant to live like this?

In an instant, normal people see this is madness and slavery, no matter how tidy it appears to international bien-pensants.

To be human is to be free, in equilibrium between good and evil and empowered to choose. They do not understand this and so they push too far, always.

They want you to believe their vision is inevitable. But do not be fooled. The Great Resist is stirring to life.

Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com