*There is some overlap at the beginning as I’d put in a bit of the next chapter.  Sorry it’s short. More next week. I’ll also do a tab for it, so you can catch up.- SAH*

I’m also trying to figure out why my sale for today (almost everything in my control is supposed to be 99c for ebooks) hasn’t gone live. I’ll go kick the publishing computer and let you know.
I’m just trying to help people who are going stir crazy.
Anyone want to have a reading on zoom?  I’m thinking of doing the first Saturday Huns dinner on Zoom. Anyone interested? I mean, I can’t FEED you, but I can have dinner with you, if you guys want to.

Look Beyond The Virus: The Left Wants Us Destroyed And They’ve Got The Means

By Bill Reader

 Author’s Note: Throughout this article I have referred to the Wuhan Virus—the name that follows the standard practice of naming viruses after their place of origin, said practice being adhered to in the case of all pandemics not originating in countries that have multi-billion dollar disinformation apparatuses at their disposal—as the CCP virus, using the convention put forth by the Epoch Times (paywall). I believe this is fair, given that China spent its energy suppressing discussion of the virus when they ought to have been suppressing the virus itself, and thus massively worsened its impact. Without the CCP, this “gift” to mankind would not have been possible. Also, in what I consider the unlikely event of the virus making good on the worst predictions and killing millions, it will be in keeping with the standard practices of the CCP and communists generally. The CCP virus is also colloquially known as COVID-19 in many sources, because we may have experimental treatments for CCP virus but the cure for political correctness remains as elusive as the Elixir of Youth.

Seeing as how I am, at present, forced to be home during the panic, I have a bit more time than I ordinarily do. This means I have more time than I have recently had to read the news, heaven help me.

I will freely admit that I am not a virologist. This isn’t my area of expertise. I can certainly appreciate the many arguments that CCP virus is more serious than the raw numbers suggest. Exponential growth, as in compound interest, can lead to nasty surprises. I have nothing against common-sense precautions like hand-washing, minimizing physical contact and maintaining decent personal space. And at best we have no real idea how it’s going to behave here yet. The US is not Italy and it’s certainly not China or Iran. That ambiguity holds the potential for much milder performance— but nobody really knows, and the worst case is quite bad.

However—I have worked with enough experts not to blindly trust expert opinion, especially not when huge political pressures are being leveraged and maximizing groupthink. You can take the reliability of an expert’s opinion on most things and decrement it by a percentage point for each US senator intensely interested in making use of said opinion for a pre-defined agenda. If you infer from this that if the expert was anything less than 100% accurate to begin with, their opinion can easily end up with negative reliability—that is, somewhat reliably incorrect—you are drawing the correct conclusion.

More broadly, I was not born yesterday.

I’m going to paint a picture for you of what I see happening. Maybe you disagree. Maybe I don’t have it entirely right. But I’ve talked to a few of my friends and I know for a fact I’m not alone in my thinking. Maybe it’s time we start talking a little more openly about this, for the good of the country.

I’d hate it to be said I’m being ambiguous about what I’m arguing. I’ll be plain: I believe the Left worked to help cause a crisis, worked to maximize the psychological impact of the crisis, and now have been given the means to determine the extent of the crisis. And if we do nothing, they may do tremendous harm to the country. For years I’ve written that the Left has at least passively been programmed to hate the country and works against its interests. I’ve detailed at length how the well-intentioned rank-and-file Democrats contribute to this, and speculated extensively about the mindset that might justify, drive, and predict their behaviors. Yet even for someone as relatively jaded as me, I am shocked at what I have seen in the last few weeks.

So step back and ignore CCP virus for a moment. It’s not that it’s not important and it’s not that it’s not dangerous. But pay careful attention to what it’s being used to justify.

Let’s go back to before CCP virus made landfall—I seem to recall the Leftist media licking its chops at the prospect. In the context of which, repatriating people from the Diamond Princess cruise ship explicitly against Donald Trump’s instructions struck me as an interesting move. By interesting I mean “a move intentionally calculated to maximize risk to one’s fellow citizens”. In the last few weeks it was one of the more brazen and sickening things I’ve seen the Deep State do. Raising blue Hell because Donald Trump ended flights from places most affected by the pandemic was likewise a fairly interesting move—again using the above definition. I was especially amused to read the coverage saying that most of the new infections are community-based transmission, as if this demonstrated that minimizing the infective individuals starting those transmission chains was therefore irrelevant. This school of thought was brought to you by the same sages, one assumes, who would not bother to turn off the water to the leaking pipes if their basement flooded, because after all, the thousands of gallons of water that have already come out of the pipes are the priority.

I enjoyed, sardonically, watching the US media gin up the virus’s presence into a full-blown panic utterly unjustified given the actual objective performance of said virus. I visited my grocery store the other day and had to check the news afterwards to make sure that Trump and Pence were still alive, and Nancy Pelosi hadn’t become president without my noticing. I don’t blame people for panic-buying, though, because the media is essentially threatening them day and night.

And I need to digress on this further. I also couldn’t help but notice—and it was pointed out by a lot on the Right—that the US media synchronized its push to make it forbidden to talk about where the virus originated from with China’s media push to forbid it. That is a deeply disturbing synchronicity with implications I hadn’t even considered until it happened. At best, and I very much hope this is the case, they are the most gullible, anti-American stooges in creation and they will latch onto any narrative that harms the country. That’s bad, but the worse possibility, and one I can’t rule out, is that they are actually working on behalf of China.

Most major media companies have some substantial presence in the Chinese market, and in that capacity publish—as Mike Bloomberg famously admitted—censored news. Which is to say they both depend on China for much of their income and have established pipelines to the people who shape governmental media narratives in China. They should probably be assumed to have a conflict of interest in this situation for that reason alone. I would put hands in the fire that many reporters are sympathetic to China besides. Journalism and academics are not the same, admittedly, but they do by and large have similar political leanings. And I knew a great number of professors who ten years ago were earnestly advising students to learn mandarin because the Chinese were going to rule the world. To people who are old communist sympathizers in good standing— and the Left has many, I assure you; see also: Bernie Sanders— that was not merely cynical realpolitik, but the hope of throwing active support behind the new “good guys”, now that the mass-murderers in the PRC have supplanted the mass-murderers in the CCCP in that role.

The broader and more awful question is that if we simply consider the possibility, for the sake of argument, then that raises the question of how many American news narratives conform to what the PRC wants. Consider the ginning up of a panic in that context. In fact, consider the last three years in that context. Consider the inordinate focus on Russia, given that their involvement in our election was provably minor. Why dig so hard at something that they almost certainly knew was nothing from the start? Consider the sudden insanity that seemed to grip the American media on Trump’s election, the degree of hyperbole in the coverage, the disconnect between what the media reports and what’s objectively seen. And consider also the glowing coverage of people who, even if they weren’t socialists, would still be obviously incompetent for office and a danger to the United States—witness Joe Biden.

I’ve heard many conservatives note that these things seemed to come out of nowhere, that it was disproportionate to all factors we could openly see, and offer psychological or strategic explanations to try to explain the gap. But what if we got all of that wrong all along? What if they became far more insane than was justified because we didn’t see all the factors in play?

For now I am simply keeping the hypothesis present in my mind as new information comes in. I think there’s enough information out there to be suspicious, but not enough to be certain. We are, after all, dealing with hyper-partisan Leftists trained by the most anti-American institutions in America, and mental illness or strategic considerations aren’t impossible. But there’s far too much money on the line for our media companies for us to simply blithely ignore that Chinese interests could be corrupting our media.

But the most disturbing thing that I see, in the context of all this, is that far from merely wishing that the US economy will tank in the wake of CCP virus, the Democrats get to have a direct hand in ensuring it will. Now, to be sure, some closures and limitation of gathering sizes was probably inevitable while we get a sense of how bad CCP virus is in a country where most people aren’t half-starved, chronically severely lung-damaged or geriatric. Businesses that run on thin margins like restaurants were going to be in serious trouble as a result, probably no matter what.

What is modulatable is how long these things go on. Because governors have a free hand to do what they like in the response, they can also be extremely unreasonable in response. While it’s not true of most of my colleagues, I’m getting a lot of secondhand reports of people being fired as their workplaces do some grim calculations on whether they can afford to pay wages during this. Some businesses are going dormant, and that’s the optimistic view. Between that and difficulty getting various products—since large parts of our supply chain were in the PRC, which was always hostile to us in a low-grade sense, and now is coming off months of shutting down the country wholesale—a huge economic hit is in progress. But both of those things are recoverable, and in fact may end up to be the seeds of the solution, since more people may be free to assist us in getting domestic manufacturing up and running at the end of this.

Unfortunately, that depends on the restrictions being lifted in a timely manner, and right now—given that it is explicitly against the interest of the Democrats for the economy to do well and they finally have a good excuse and the means to stop it at will—we need to be weary of governors (and other government officers in a position to do so) enacting excessive shutdowns, and maintaining them for excessive durations, for nakedly partisan reasons. They know, as well as we do, that every week that this goes on costs more Americans their livelihoods, makes more people run through limited reserve funds decimated by the prior decade of Democratic governance and still not rebuilt despite the much better economic policies under Trump, and makes the economy start further behind when all this ends.

“But surely, Bill, you want to continue the restrictions as long as necessary to prevent this terrible disease killing anyone,” you might say. To which I respond that, sadly, life is about optimization, not maximization. The line of reasoning arguing we should try to prevent any deaths is the line of reasoning from which the Left argues that we should shut down the entire economy to prevent all pollution. When you define an extreme enough goal, your solutions become untenable, however distasteful the tradeoffs may seem. By the way, does the “shut down the economy to prevent global cataclysm” narrative sound a little more familiar now? It should. To bring further clarity to the matter I recommend reading this excellent article from Joy Pullmann at “The Federalist”. The upshot is that no, actually, we should not blithely destroy our economy—which we all depend on, young and old—in order to prevent spread of a disease we have no idea the actual severity of, which might well almost exclusively be a risk to people with serious co-morbidities or advanced age. Those groups, incidentally, being the groups at more risk for dying of nearly anything, including similar flu like illnesses we might not have noticed if not for the over-the-top publicity.

When I hear rumors of offices wanting to extend this through May, or even 18 months of intermittent shutdowns, as noted in the article above, insofar as I’m keeping tabs on the progress of the CCP virus and know that it’s not in response to anything I’m seeing, I’m forced to conclude that either there are internal statistics I’m not privy to (which I gage as less likely now that the CDC is no longer acting as a single point of failure and filter for all stats), or they’re responding to motives having nothing to do with the virus. Maybe it’s more that they smell blood—an opportunity to tank the economy. Who knows, maybe they could even expand the welfare rolls a bit. It’s all upside when your main political angle is taking advantage of people when they have a rough time, and you know how to cause a rough time. If your sales pitch is that they need a third party to guarantee their basic needs and then fate lets you start artificially chipping away at same—and you’re morally sanguine about being part of a protection racket with a government address—then this is the opportunity you’ve prayed for.

For this reason, you need to be attentive not just to news coverage but to the raw numbers on the virus. Though I can’t prove it, I think we can trust the numbers coming from our own medical institutions at the moment, if nothing else because it’s been decentralized enough to make lies complex to maintain, with a lot of people who could help provide information to debunk a deception if one was tried. If someone tries to say the utmost precaution is needed or, heaven forbid, inflate the numbers above reports, and it doesn’t conform to reality, people working at the hospitals are still free to say—”gee, weird that there’s only one case at the largest hospital in the largest city in the state if we have 2 million cases”. Because we aren’t China, the information is at least likely to be available.

But absolutely do not count on the media to tell you. They have a vested interest in not telling you when the ramp-down happens even if they are mere partisans, and if they’re something worse, that goes triple. Go to the source. Pay attention to the news in the spirit of knowing what’s being fed to you. Pay attention to whether it continues to connect up with the Chinese official narrative. We may have a whole other crisis to deal with after this one, in that respect.

And once you start to see a drop-off—I’m talking, say, three days of day-over-day drops in active cases—you need to be applying pressure to your governor, by E-mail, telephone, or written letters. Make it clear you’re paying attention. My bet is they’re going to be counting on the public to be over-cautious. That’s the whole point of the media panic. What they want is for you to defer to interpretations of official reports that they get to control or cherry pick the authors of. And if you do that, frankly, I think they’ll drag this out for at least a full month longer than necessary purely for their own gain, and that’s my most optimistic guess. They might even succeed at causing a full-on depression which would be to the benefit of nobody, but especially the old and infirm this is supposedly meant to protect. So make them fully aware that you know the underlying numbers, and that you’re not interested in being in quarantine at their pleasure. Politicians pretty reliably protect their own political interests given sufficient pressure— and that’s where you come in.

Also, start establishing online networks now, if you haven’t already. One interesting side-effect of all this is that it’s almost impossible to petition politicians in the usual way during a quarantine. You can’t have people gathering signatures near public areas, or going door-to-door in neighborhoods, and you probably would have great difficulty even filing the paperwork. If you think that the people in your government haven’t noticed that, you’re being naive. We might be forced to start looking into the tactics of the Left instead—bringing overwhelming online attention to the actions and elevating the noise-level surrounding the subject to the point where it can’t be ignored, however anyone feels about it. To facilitate doing this, you might make good use of your quarantine time by putting together groups of like-minded people who are both paying close attention to news and would be willing to help shine a light on a target if any of you notice anything funny going on.

It might not hurt to knock on a few neighbor’s doors and make friends too, even if you do so from an approved interpersonal distance. There is zero reason to take down the internet during all this— and you should regard anyone suggesting we do so when much of our remaining economic activity, and all of our discourse, is moving online en masse— as explicitly an enemy of the country. But if the idea gets floated, you might be glad to know some people in the real world.

This is a difficult time for our country. Our own institutions are largely arrayed against us. It’s hard, at this point, to even be sure to what extent they are still our own institutions. But even from right there, where you sit, you can do things to help ensure the country gets through it, and to blunt the offensive of the Left against the country in our time of weakness.

I urge you to do so.

I do not claim to have a crystal ball. I can create plausible enough future worlds to write about, though to be fair I’m not trying to make them correct, I’m trying to make them interesting, which is why sometimes miracles are invoked and dressed in the robes of science. Because it makes it more interesting to read about and my job is to entertain, not to forecast.

Which is good. Because on 9/11 while people on TV kept saying it had changed our world utterly, I sat there, paralyzed and horrified, but at the same time thinking it wouldn’t change much of anything.

I was more or less wrong. It plunged us into war for a long time, and it changed the American people into accepting total strangers pawing them, and being treated as potential terrorists rather than risk offending the actual terrorists. It sent us down a path where my children think it’s totally normal to obey nonsensical strangers who want to search high school students rather than the veiled woman ahead of them, who might not be a woman (well, in the Middle East this is often used) and who is declaring her allegiance to the one religion that downs planes in the modern era. (The communists more or less stopped doing it in the seventies.)

It broke something in our spirit I think and it made it possible for the enemy within to gain a foothold in the minds of indoctrinated children whom they berated on how evil and bad our country is. It made Howard Zinn the basis of most history books.  This is ostensibly because the left believes we brought the attacks on ourselves. It is ACTUALLY because they’re spineless cowards, who are afraid they’ll be the next ones killed and who want to get in good with “our future overlords” before they take over. They want to be special pets. I know because they did the same with communists, and that’s why they’re the enemy within. But they’re also too stupid to realize communists (particularly Soviet communists, i.e. Russian NATIONAL socialists wouldn’t work that way. And what they don’t understand about Islam, including that people actually believe it would fill several oceans of ink.)

Anyway, the weird thing happening to me right now, through the Chinese-virus-panic, is that I’m sitting here in slack-jawed horror thinking that everything changed, that we’ve lost our last chance at restoring our republic and Western civilization with it, that the US and the world are on the brink of a new authoritarian age.  And no one else seems to see it.

It’s not the virus. yes, I DO get trying not to overwhelm ICU in the smaller towns, and “bending the curve.” But let’s be real, okay? Half of this is the panic.  Because otherwise we’d be doing this for the flu every year. And who knows, perhaps we will in the future. Which is a terrifying thought in and of itself.

When I opened the browser to come here, there was some young twat’s article in the New Yorker being advertised “How to get one’s boomer parents to understand the danger and obey” or something like it.  I rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell out. Because the young twat’s parents (you did well, as grandmother said you might now wipe your hands to the wall, since that saves tp anyway) if boomers are not in the highest danger group, and also because I suspect the young twat would call anyone over forty a boomer. And again, those are not in the highest danger. The danger is SPECIFICALLY to those 80 and over, and my parents aren’t boomers. They remember World War II.

And I remember the cold war.  And I remember, partly because America’s left allowed the rest of the world to suffer Soviet imperialism rather than say boo, because oh, no, the bad men might nuke us, the revolution and counter revolution that were our daily bread in the seventies in Portugal.

I doubt the young twat’s parents (Maybe the young idiot should start a band:Fine Young Twats.) remember the things I do, but they probably understand something the precious idiot doesn’t: Where money comes from.  They are probably looking — as the rest of us who are literate and don’t take our opinions from snap chat — at the numbers and the actual danger and then looking at our stopped economy, our plunging stock market and thinking that there’s a lot of ruin in a country, and we’re going to find exactly how much.

You see, part of the problem is that we’ve lived so well so long. There is a generation coming up that has completely divorced the concept of work and creation from the concept of money.  No, it doesn’t help that their idiot teachers and the leftist politicians my parents age or close to it, for that matter, also do not know where money comes from. Wanting to believe in communism, because they think their mediocre selves will be in charge, forces them to stop believing in reality and the harshest reality of all of is “where money comes from and what it does.”

It is, in fact, a derivative of the natural law that every creature, animal or plant, everything that’s alive must earn its living: its right to continue being alive. In biology textbooks you often found how some creature or other “earns its living.” I don’t know if you still do.

Humans have separated themselves from raw nature, in this as in so many things, through the use of symbols — money — and trade. But money in the end is still a symbol — a container, may be a better word — for what we do to make a living, and to acquire the things we need to acquire.

The left doesn’t understand this, and thinks it can print an unlimited amount of money.

They’re not wrong, at that. They can. it’s just they can’t create value with it. This stimulus bill that passed to get us over the complete stoppage of the American economy did not create money. Instead it reached into all our money, all our value, from our houses and possessions, to our stock shares, to our furniture, our clothes, everything we own, and took a portion of it.

Now this is sometimes necessary. And it is arguably necessary now, if you argue the stoppage was necessary. (It wasn’t. Precautions were. Stopping wasn’t.) Because there are entire industries that just came to a close, not just at the behest of the Federal government — airlines — but at the behest of stupid, power-mad fash-boots governors — I’m looking at you Jared Polis and your entire ilk. And I can’t believe my eyes. I didn’t know anyone that ignorant of economics could be as old as you are. My cat understands work and value better than your lot  — who are flexing their authoritarian muscles by forbidding EVERYTHING and putting their own citizens under house arrest.

Because the press has scared people so much, it is unlikely these blights on the political landscape will get thrown out of office, much less what they deserve which is to be walked naked and tied to the tail of a donkey through their capitals, while being pelted with refuse by the populace.

While they satisfy their inner fantasies of power and glory (I bet Jared Polis is posing like Evita right now) they are destroying the hospitality industry which is still a great part of Colorado’s economy. For saner ways to go about this look to Texas.

It is necessary to help those industries, but was it necessary to let Nancy Pelosi write the bill, which destroys small businesses and creates yet more pain?  Have we learned nothing from letting Malig-Nancy pass bills so we can find what’s in them?

Trump went along with it. Remember he’s not actually a Libertarian. He’s a New York Businessman. And the GOP went along with it.

This brings us to Enemies-domestic: the left is flexing everything that remains of its power to convince the population that they’re all going to die and that only government can save them.

It might work long enough to elect their spokes-zombie, Joe Biden, D-mentia, to the presidency.  That’s what they’re counting on. Because once they get it, we will never, ever, ever vote our way out. Shooting our way out is the only thing we can hope for.

And we must count on Trump to turn the corner on that.  I’m not sure about it. They’re trying to pass the second stimulus bill to repair what the first undid. (As always, government pretending to fix what it broke. The quarantine broke things, and now the stimulus bill broke more things…. Pardon me I’m going to be ill.) But the second won’t pass, because Malig-Nancy and the House Wreckers will not want the mess repaired. They want us to go down in flames, so socialism looks good.

Enemies, domestic.

Look, there is a possibility, a bare possibility that we come through this okay.  The mess Obama left behind, Trump could only get us out of one of two ways: grow past the debt, or inflate past the debt.

The first one was working, but now the enemies-domestic have thrown it in the pot, and all that remains is the painful second.  Thank heavens we used the last of our savings getting the kids through college. (She says bitterly.) The smart money now is to spend it all and borrow as much as you can. It’s how inflation works.

But unlike the panicky spokes-twat for the know-nothings, I remember the seventies.  Ladies and gentlemen, this one is going to hurt like a MOTHER.

And one way or another, my kids will be entering the workforce this year.  What a time to enter it.  And my husband and I will be trying to repair the ruinous state of our domestic economy now with far less energy and into the same type of economy that faced us when we first entered the workforce.

Hurray for Hollywood, and the press, and the educational establishment, and the “learned economists” who think money grows on trees, and the politicians who are fossilized excrement of the Soviet Snake. Three cheers and a hat trick! I’m so impressed I could puke.

Work, my friends. Work as hard as you can. Build under, build over, build around.

And let’s hope G-d in His infinite sense of humor still looks after Fools, Drunkards and the United States of America.  And that as grandma assured me, He can write straight on humanity’s crooked lines.

This last week and the events thereof will be playing themselves out for the rest of my life, even if I — which is unlikely — should live to see a 100.

And we’re going to need all the luck, all the work, all the desperate struggle we can muster so that our children and grandchildren don’t live in one of many competing national socialism(s).

Socialism kills, fast or slow. National or international it’s just a matter of speed and directness.

Let’s keep it from our shores yet once more.

 

 

Same Panic, Different Century? by Alma Boykin

Wet weather the year before had damaged the northern wheat harvest, causing prices to rise and farmers to fear bankruptcy. A trade fight hurt luxury exports, causing more economic uncertainty. People heard rumors of trouble, of outside agitators, of old enemies moving to disrupt the country, and new enemies planning to assault the rightful ruler. People aired their complaints and fears in messages to the government, voicing concerns about the economy, defense, trade. Uncertainty filled the air, and people glanced over their shoulders, waiting, just waiting as rumors trickled out of the capital. Trustworthy news was hard to come by. All the fire of fear needed was a spark . . .[1]

No, not the US in 2020. France in July of 1789. Change a few words, however, add in the internet, and you can see some very strong similarities. History never repeats exactly. However, when similar combinations of elements form, similar results result.

A lot of things troubled France in the spring and summer of 1789. Some had been simmering for years, decades, probably centuries in some regions. Others stemmed from more recent causes. If you could go back to late April of 1789 in France and talk to people in the cities, towns, and rural areas, you’d find fear and uncertainty, resentment, and growing tensions. Traditional societies and change do not get along well, and this was one of those times when too much change met with too many old problems.

Hunger had afflicted much of northern France the previous year. Heavy storms had destroyed wheat and other grain crops in the north. Wine makers had yet to recover from the price collapse of the 1770s-80s, and an early freeze didn’t help them. The government had tried to improve the internal marketing of grain, but people did not believe that things were getting better. They saw wagons of grain going . . . Where? Away, and so they attacked the caravans, paying only the “just price” for the grain that they took. Towns sent people into the country side to confiscate grain, lest the townsfolk go hungry. Taxes consumed much of what was left.

Groups of beggars demanded food, shelter, and other things or they would destroy property, murder, assault, all the horrors one could imagine. Dearth and beggars had existed for ages, but the unease made the problem worse. Any outsider was suspect, and people feared the worst as large numbers of people took to the roads for survival.[2]

Combine all of that with the calls for a meeting of the legislature, the Estates General, and tension increased. The people wanted changes in the taxes, especially the labor and salt taxes. They wanted feudal dues ended. They wanted grain to stay at home, and order. If only the king knew, he’d fix the nobles. If only the king knew . . .

As some news came from Paris and Versailles about the meeting of the Estates General, tension eased in some places and increased in others. After the Tennis Court Oath on June 20th and the renunciation of feudal rights by the nobles, some of the Second Estate fled France. The Prince of Condé was rumored to be gathering support to come back with an army of mercenaries, as were others. Or perhaps it was the queen’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, just as it had been in the 1640s. Or the English were coming? Rumor whispered as the grain ripened.[3]

In late July, a combination of political events (the dismissal of the popular finance minister Jacques Necker and stories that the king had sent troops to disperse the parliament), the closeness of harvest, and who-knows-what triggered waves of mass panic.[4] They began, as best historians can tell, around July 20 and subsided by early September. Alarm bells rang, cows in tall grass became armies of brigands, and fear ran through much of France. In some places, peasants destroyed manors and church records on the assumption that without documents, the old rights could not be enforced. In other places, they locked town gates and barricaded them, or marched as a militia to rescue the next town from the beggars and brigands, only to be mistaken for the rumored army and send fear flying to another place. The panic seemed to spread between ten and twenty miles a day, some days perhaps thirty, going both along trade routes and overland, over mountains and across rivers.

Some people tried to stop the fear. They asked for more information, or refused to sound the warning bells.[5] In areas that had either already had their peasant uprisings, or conversely where the people trusted local authorities, nothing much happened. Normandy and parts of Brittany, the far southwestern corner of France, other areas remained unmoved by the panic. In many cases, those who urged calm faced accusations of being in league with the nobles, or of insulting the messengers. How dare they demand proof? Would the man have ridden so far so fast if he had not truly seen a farm burning and an army of brigands moving through the forest? To question his account was to question his courage and honor, and the skeptical often found themselves shouted down.[6]

Then it faded away. No armies of brigands or mercenaries marched through France. The harvest of 1789 proved to be a good one, and the hunger eased. Paris reached a peaceful compromise, although tensions remained. The fear melted away, and contemporary writers dismissed it as further proof of the stupidity and gullibility of rural people. Later historians took much the same approach, with a few supposing a conspiracy of rumors deliberately planted.

Jump ahead to 2020. We see a country swept by a great fear of a foreign invader, a virus. What led up to the fear, as best I can tell?

1. Media talking about a looming recession and economic doom, and foreign meddling with US politics. Neither of which proved to be quite what rumor had claimed.
2. A leader who irritates the elites and challenges their “divine right to rule.”
3. A disease that breaks out in a country infamous for its approach to the well-being of its people, but that the American elites seem to venerate.
4. Rumors of people dropping dead in the streets, of people locked into their homes to die.
5. Pronouncements of coming doom if the US government doesn’t “do something.” When it takes a sensible step, the media
6. Declare that action to be foolish, racist, and wrong, and demand that the government do the something they want.
7. And then the disease appears in the US, hits already vulnerable populations very hard, and the media and elites demand a panic.
8. Panic appears.

The people calling for calm and reasonable behavior are shouted down, in some cases literally, by others who insist that they know better. To question the fearful is to be on the side of the virus.

We’ve seen viri before. We’ve seen Great Fears before. The lack of real data and the desire by some for a reason to panic combined to create the Great Fear of 2020. How will it end? I’m a historian, not a prophet. I hope it subsides with a minimum of economic damage, although I’m not holding my breath. We’ll come up with better tests, discover that the fatality rate of the virus is lower than the percentage forecast for the population as a whole, and we’ll bring a lot of biotech back to the US. A lot of people will be irked at the mess, in hindsight, and biologists will mutter about virgin-soil epidemics and hysteria.

Wash your hands, cough into your elbow, don’t go to work or school if you feel like crud. And be not afraid. We’ve seen this before. Build under, build around, be not afraid. Fear is of the Enemy.

 

For more on mass hysteria in history: https://historycollection.co/12-historys-baffling-mass-hysteria-outbreaks/

On the Great Fear: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/great-fear/

On the French Revolution: Simon Schama. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. It is a tome, but well written. An accessible survey, if a touch out of date.

On the French Revolution outside of the cities: Peter McPhee. Living the French Revolution: 1789-99 A more recent (2006) description of life in rural France at the time.

The best single book I’ve encountered on the Great Fear: Georges Lefebvre. The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France. It is an older work, but goes into detail and is pretty readable.

 

[1] Lefebvre, 12; Schama, 62-63.

[2] Lefebvre, 14, 17-18.

[3] Shama, 631, describes a nearly identical event in 1703 with William III of England and Holland rumored to be attacking. He had been dead for a year and more.

[4] Lefebvre, 125.

[5] Schama, 629-30; Lefebvre, 152-153.

[6] Lefebvre, 153-54.

I’m Done – A Guest post by Michael Hooten

You know, I used to be among the group that believed that President Trump’s twitter usage was no big deal.  I thought he used it to tweak the press, to get them to overreact, and to generally misdirect them while he did other, more significant things in the background.

Not any more.

Now, I believe that he should tweet more, and find even more ways to subvert the press to get his message out, and to do so with all the passion and bombacity he has ever shown.

Why the change of heart?  Because of this past Sunday, March 15, 2020.  I saw firsthand what the press is willing to do to stoke the panic in this country over a virus that while certainly dangerous, is not likely to approach plague level death, even in those countries most affected.

I’m not even talking about the way the press has given us every worst case scenario they could dream of in that serious, authoritative voice they use to inform us of our impending doom.  That’s bad enough. No, what finally put me over the edge was a simple thing, really. I wanted to know what Trump said at his press conference on Sunday. And it was not very easy.

Think about how you get news: you go to your favorite news site, or you turn on the TV, and you skim through the headlines.  See what the top stories are. And yes, Sunday evening, there were plenty of articles about Coronavirus everywhere I looked. And then on a local news aggregate, I saw that Trump had given an address about the state of things.  And when I clicked the link… it was broken. But I saw that it had come from a local news station, and I went to their website, and looked for the article. It wasn’t on the front page, but I did find it as #7 on their most read stories on the sidebar.  Clicked on it, and got a wire article that started off with this:

President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Americans to cease hoarding groceries and other supplies, while one of the nation’s most senior public health officials called on the nation to act with more urgency to safeguard their health as the coronavirus outbreak continued to spread across the United States. Dr. Anthony Fauci says he would like to see aggressive measures such as a 14-day national shutdown.

Great lede, don’t you think?  That last sentence especially really puts it all into perspective, essentially saying that Trump is urging people to stop panicking, but one of the leading experts is urging for even more drastic measures.

Great.  Now try to find the press conference from Sunday.  Not coming up? Well, the article I pulled that quote from didn’t give a link to the address itself, but to the daily CDC briefing, and as a live link.  Not the last one they gave. And definitely not to the address that Trump gave. So I googled “Trump address Sunday”, and found a few articles that were basically the same wire report quoted above.  And the videos the search gave me were mostly from the previous week, but none from Sunday.

So I tried this: “Trump march 15”.  The second video was this one, which is a clip from the address, but not the whole thing.  Still, some good information in there, if you care to watch. And a slam of the press for spreading fake news, which is looking more and more justified.

Because the next thing I looked for was Dr Fauci’s wanting a 14 day national shutdown.  That was the implication you got, wasn’t it? But it took me a bit to find that actual video as well. And it was not exactly what it was advertised to be, what a shock.  Dr Fauci urged caution, preferred over-reaction to under reaction, but also urged rational approach. Not all areas needed a shutdown, he said. And not all places were going to be as affected.  And the situation is serious, but not dire. But don’t trust me, watch it for yourself.

I hate the press right now.  The words they use are designed to scare.  The stories they highlight are the most extreme.  They do not compare it to previous pandemics, or even to the typical flu.  The misinformation is subtle, and they claim to be giving us the facts, but then they spread rumour and innuendo.  Are the facts there? Kind of. If you look. But not it’s not what they highlight. Look at that opening paragraph again.  Half a sentence of Trump the authoritarian jerk. The rest is dire projections and how we need to ignore him.

We’re in the midst of a panic.  It’s unnecessary, counter productive, and quite frankly, dangerous.  The press is asking, “Can we handle this?” and then telling us that we really can’t.

So now, I want Trump to route around them.  Find ways to spread the message, and by all means, mock the press.  When this passes, and it will, be the one who looks like he hadn’t lost his mind.  And then do a super cut of all the ways the press stoked this inferno.

Just be prepared to cut it down a bit.  Because no one watches videos that last for days.

Tomorrow is likely to be one of the more interesting — and possibly most difficult — day in several years.  So in anticipation of that, I’m writing this post on Sunday night, so maybe I won’t forget half of it and wander off, as I’m wont to do.

Yes, it’s entirely possible that’s what happened to the vignettes yesterday.

To compound it all, while personal life keeps being interesting (nothing really horribly bad, so far, just one “emergency” after another.  Nothing final. Yet. (Knocks on head.)) there is the fact my country has — from my perspective — lost its mind.

Look, guys, I’m not trying to be contrary. I’m really, really not. But I am incapable of not asking questions, when things make absolutely no sense whatsoever to me.

So, for instance, there’s this article:  Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17.

And my mind goes: uh…. so, closing to travel in — when was it? January? — is kind of interesting, but a) it would already be all over. b)remember that nasty cold we all had?

A friend asked about Italy and Iran. And why they hadn’t shown problems earlier, if this was loose in the world from November.

Well…. You know, the US probably has more contact with China than any other place in the world except Africa.  And Iran…. well, who knows when it started there? If I remember up till mid January, they were still trying to shoot people who don’t like government by mullah.  Can you trust the news that come out of there?  Beyond the fact that it was when we closed travel that they started LICKING shrines to prove their religion would save them from the virus… or something.

As for Italy…. I don’t know? Maybe it took that long to reach a place with an elderly enough population that it overcame the health system.

Oh, yeah, and that health system…. yes, it’s very well rated by the WHO. The problem is that one of the ways that the WHO rates systems is by “Universal access” (by which they mean universal insurance. No one can convince them that if you don’t have insurance or money you still get treated in the US. Part of it is understandable, because, you know, in Europe if you don’t have your government card, you need to have a form from another government to get treated.  (At least when I went abroad, I had papers drawn up, so I could be treated in case of emergency. Note this was before the EU. Will be different now.)  And single payer.  So, by those accounts, Italy — particularly that region — is sitting pretty.  However they seem to have something around 5x fewer beds in ICU per 100000 people than we do.

Besides having an older, more gregarious population, etc. etc.  Also, FYI, this is being circulated as a joke, but has anyone considered it’s the type of crazy thing aged boomers would actually do, while the younger people would go “nah, brah, we’re cool”, where their premier? president? (Whatever the heck they call their figurehead in those parts) had a campaign anti-racism in which he told people to hug a Chinese immigrant?  Apparently, btw, for strange tax incentive reasons there are Chinese nationals that have small shops all over the EU…  It’s also entirely possible that these people all went home for New Year and brought the funhappy virus back.

The point of all this is that I’m still convinced I had it, Jan and Feb (and seem to be over it, but into a major case of stress-induced autoimmune attack) so bad that I had to get a refill on my asthma inhaler for the first time in a year.  And I don’t think I’m the lone ranger. I think a lot of people here had it.  And survived it.

I think most people who aren’t already desperately ill/elderly/compromised will survive it, in fact, with minimal distress. (Okay, maybe not minimal. It is a truly nasty cold/flu thing, the worst of it being that it won’t stop coming back, so you never know when you’re actually well. It also can leave you weakened for other infections, which can do horrible damage.  So, as always, after a viral infection, watch yourself.)

And I think it’s all through the nation. I told you, and I hold to it that if testing became widespread, there would be a panic, because it would be everywhere.  I still think it’s everywhere.  I’m starting to wonder if the hold up on the tests — besides the fact that they’re apparently less accurate than normal tests — is because the government/administration/health services know that and are waiting till most of the people are OVER the infection before they test.

Anyway, among the questions that bother me: What about Africa? I know people that have family and friends there.  I have yet to hear that there is massive distress/death/illness there.  And guys, if you don’t realize most of Africa is now a Chinese colony…..

What about India and Pakistan?  I actually have fans in both, and fans who have families in both. No widespread panic.

One of the possibly funnier things this weekend, was Mexico “closing” the border with us for fear of COVID-19.  Not to mention ISIS issuing a travel advisory against the Wu-Flu.

But behind the comedy there is something very real.

Part of our reason for panicking is that China obviously panicked and closed most of their economy down because of this virus.

If they didn’t have massive mortality why would they do it?

Well…. you see…. It’s China. Expecting straight up rationality from China is not a good bet. Yes, they are motivated by money, but some of the things they do with/for money are more symbolic than real. See for instance their ghost cities.

It’s entirely possible it suited China to use the virus — which would be worse there for environmental reasons — as an excuse to conduct wide-scale purges. We KNOW that their numbers are completely insane and not real….

But would they shut down their economy to do this?  I don’t know. And neither do you.  Again, what other country in the world would build entire ghost cities that no one can live in, or would live in as a sort of symbol for investments, instead of real investments?  “It’s China” is as good an explanation as any.

Okay, but what about other Asian countries getting hit?  Well…. South Korea seems to have coped pretty well.

What about Italy?

What about Italy? They have the most aged population in the world, a touchy-feely culture, and a medical system that welcomes the chance to “triage” senior citizens out of existence.  So– what about Italy? Honestly a bad flu hitting a large number all at the same time could have that exact result without the hype.

And you do realize that other countries are now looking at us and going “The US has to be lying. They wouldn’t shut down their country and take that hit to the economy for so few dead.”

Which means that’s how the insanity spreads.  Well, that and because you know the idiot press abroad actually believes OUR idiot press who is trying Wiley Coyote like to get Orangemanbad with a virus from Acme.  You can tell that from the gleeful articles, like the Atlantic proclaiming that the Trump presidency is over. (What? Again???)

Mexico and Isis aren’t just been classless loons. Well, classless as usual, but not loons. They really think the West must have this much worse than anyone else by the way we’re behaving.

What is lost in all this is the obvious populist struggles against the international left and its allied Mullahs: the Hong Kong protests, the Iranian revolt, what could have been the echoes of Brexit throughout the EU, and the fact that our socialist-lite party is a giant clown car in the middle of a dumpster fire.

The press has successfully muted all that, and the attempts to depose Hillary under oath, and the smelly bilge coming out about the attempted coup against the president (coup by impeachment. I’d say it was clever if it weren’t crazy) with the complicity of the media, and the various crazy things the left has been up to for three years, all underneath a blanket of “We’re all going to DIIIIIIIIEEEEEE.”

Meanwhile the crazy totalitarians are all over, saying how this shows we need a single payer health care (of course. That’s if we want to be triaged out of existence), how we need a stronger central government, how we need martial law and internal passports.

And it’s giving EVERY country a chance to close down and deal with “internal problems”, i.e. internal dissension, before it topples the self-proclaimed elites.  And no, we’re not immune. Yes, I’d trust Trump to turn it against them in the end, but right now he’s something of an hostage. He has to go along, at least to an extent, to calm the panicked/stampeding populace.

So…. what I think is happening is that we’re destroying our economy and ultimately the economy of the world for what will amount to maybe 10 to 15k deaths in the US.  Which I’m informed is a MILD flu season.  There are businesses that will never recover, our debt will skyrocket, there will be people who are going to go through dire times.  Far far in excess of 10 to 15k people are going to suffer badly for this.

And they’ll try to say it’s because we quarantined, just as they said that the Y2K bug wasn’t as destructive because “we took care of it.”  Guys, I knew programers working in that at the time. It was NEVER going to be that destructive. Inconvenient and clunky, sure. End of civilization? Not a chance.  But hey…. Great panic was had by all.

In many ways, and for many bureaucracies not to mention the left and its attached media, this is a test run for how badly they can stampede us, and how much of our liberties they can steal under the cover of some “emergency.”

My question is — if I’m right, and this all blows over and the elephant gives birth to a mouse, what then?

Are we going to allow the media to continue to take charge of our country’s psyche, like three terrorists with boxcutters taking over an airliner?

Or are we going to learn from the experience and next time — there WILL be a next time, I guarantee — they try to do this, we beat them black and blue, tie them up with belts and stuff them in the overhead luggage compartment?  Metaphorically speaking?

Because I hate to tell you this, but 2016 was not the only Flight 93 Election This upcoming one, and probably the next three or four are all Flight 93 elections. If you let the people bent on the gleeful destruction of Western civilization and indeed all civilization take over, you’d better be ready to shoot your way out of the Gulag they’ll create.

So — if this all proves to be much ado about nothing, what are you going to do to ensure it won’t happen again?  How do you keep the laser-pointer distracted public from forgetting all of this?  And how do you make sure this is not all used to increase power over the individual?

Build over, build under, build around.  Refuse to cave in to the madness.  Only ruminants get stampeded.

 

*Sorry to be so late.  Someday maybe I’ll share the story of these last few weeks. Nothing bad has happened, at least not yet, but there are several things worrying me, mostly things I can do nothing about. They’ll either turn out well, or they won’t. They are actually already decided and completely out of my hands. And I’ll find out about most of them over the next week, some others over the next couple of months. There is nothing so designed to drive a person with imagination insane.  I spend long hours doing nothing, but I know my subconscious is spinning like a hamster on a wheel. This is exhausting and unfortunately with nothing achieved to go with the exhaustion. Ah well, this too shall pass. And maybe I need to learn this: patience and that I can’t control everything. Or really, much of anything. Even when it matters desperately.  Yes, I DID in fact say it’s another d*mn learning experience.  Meanwhile for the next month, forgive me the occasional lateness and more than usual strangeness. As well as occasional bad temper, please.- SAH*

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: WITCHFINDER.

(Yes, I’m fixing the widget on the side, which means I might as well push this.  It’s the prequel to Witch’s Daughter.)

In Avalon, where the world runs on magic, the king of Britannia appoints a witchfinder to rescue unfortunates with magical power from lands where magic is a capital crime. Or he did. But after the royal princess was kidnapped from her cradle twenty years ago, all travel to other universes has been forbidden, and the position of witchfinder abolished. Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, son of the last witchfinder, breaks the edict. He can’t simply let people die for lack of rescue. His stubborn compassion will bring him trouble and disgrace, turmoil and danger — and maybe, just maybe, the greatest reward of all.

FROM AMIE GIBBONS: Psychic Overboard: An SDF Paranormal Mystery Novella.

It’s anything but a pleasure cruise.

Ariana Ryder’s barely had her powers for three months when she takes a cruise with some girlfriends, and one serious frienemy, for their last college Christmas break.

But when she gets a vision of zombies descending on the ship, a bitchy girl becomes the least of her problems.

Now, all she’s got is one brave bartender, a stowaway flying carpet, and her wits to fight the zombies and save hundreds of innocents trapped onboard.

FROM DENTON SALLE:  Thawing Hearts.

Vanessa only wanted to do her job as head nurse and walk her dog. Not interested in love. Guys were just users.
Then that cowboy Nick turned up. Attraction sizzled. Winter got awful hot.
Burned before, can she trust her heart this time?
A sweet romance where love surprises everyone.

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER:  Paper or Plastic?

Roger was medically discharged after his service in the Pan Arabic Protectorate, cutting off his chosen career path early. He is living in rural Sitra Falls, Oregon trying to deal with hyper-vigilance and ease back into civilian life.
(Updated edition 11/2016)

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Sword and Shadow.

A short story of magic and reunions.

At long, long last. . . .

For five long years, Sanchia has held the lands of her husband alone, while he fought in the desperate war against malign shades. Much will change when he returns.

Especially because he brings the magical sword, found in the mountains, with him. And, it turns out, other things follow.

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Freshmen (Wine of the Gods Book 50).

Diamond has made it into the Directorate School, but what does a penniless freshman do over the summer? Get together with her best buddy and get a summer job with the Department of Magic, of course. Then there are a few minor problems. Clothes, someplace to stay, sexy men who think a sixteen year old is a child . . . oh, and a major instability in the Multiverse is threatening to destroy the permanent transdimensional gates. But that not her problem. Right?

FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Furiously Familiar: Familiar Tales Book 9.

Ah, the holiday season. Peace, quiet, rest, and . . . were-creatures?

The perfect Halloween and Christmas gift for a pair of shadow mages? A fat holiday pay-check and no excitement. Lelia Chan and her fiancé survived enough excitement already for the year. Unable to work magic, André needs time to rest and recover. Lelia just wants to survive the goth sales rush of Halloween through Christmas.

But a young man looking for a were-wolf belt leads Lelia and her Familiar Tay onto a dark and deadly road.

Winter brings darkness and shadow. Evil also walks the long nights, stalking innocents. Evil also watches Lelia, patient, waiting . . .

UPDATE: Yes, yes, I did in fact completely forget the vignettes. Which will give you some insight into how strange things are out here.

Sorry, we were taking care of a bunch of things as our state shuts down around us because our math-retarded and panicking governor has ordered no more than 250 people anywhere at the same time.  I think he has no idea how many 250 people actually are. Also, frankly, sure, 250 people in a small room could be a danger (of someone catching a bad cold which if they’re stupid enough to expose themselves while they have other risk factors could kill them, yes (and I say that as someone with risk factors.)) 250 people in … oh, the Denver art museum?  I don’t think in anything but free days or special, limited-time exhibits (for things people actually want to see, not installations and performance art) we’ve ever run into more than 3 other people PER ROOM.  And social distance is very distant indeed.  But hey, 250 people sounded okay to Polis. It’s probably the maximum people he sleeps with per day, or something.  And totalitarians got to totalitarian.

This is going to destroy restaurants, hotels, anyone who depends on touristic income (a lot of people in CO) etc. etc. etc.  Of course the media is amplifying the reports of job losses already, because they think this helps their cause of taking down the economy.

Who knows? It might. I just wish people with buy tulips. It’s less harmful.

Never mind.

I realized today we’re now one of those countries where the other countries in the world are going “well, if they only have under a 100 deaths, why are they shutting down like this? There has to be more deaths they’re hiding.” And thus the panic spreads. I mean, other countries believe US media.

Which is what has driven this insanity from the beginning.

I’m going to lay down a marker for total deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the US somewhere between 7 and 15k. IOW, bad flu season, and mostly the groups affected by the flu. (NOT that the media will tell you that. Instead they’ll talk about plague-level mortality and try to convince us those numbers are terrible.)

I’m going to lay down a marker for the deaths and illnesses from the economic disruption caused by the panic being AT LEAST ten times that, and that’s just the ones we can count, not the second, third and fourth order effects.

I hope the major media lives to know they burned what remained of their scant credibility on this.

And I’m praying that when all is said and done, people know who was responsible: the left and the media in their frenzy to get Orangemanbad.  I’m not betting on it mind you, because people are stupid and might very well decide they’re unemployed/broke because — as those nice talking heads say — bad Trump caused this.

Keep in mind that when I say this about the US I’m not saying it about the rest of the world: where, never mind lies and statistics, health care is FAR worse, and social contact FAR more frequent and population IN GENERAL older (And the places it’s not the hygiene is appalling, so….).  The rest of the world is going to hurt, very hard.  Unfortunately because of our media induced panic, we won’t be in a position to help. (Insert shrugging emoji. Oh, well.)

Meanwhile, those of you stuck with kids at home, don’t forget The Teaching Company.  If you’re not in CO and your library system HASN’T closed, you might be able to grab some. If it’s history, view them first, or view them with the kids to mitigate the spin.

And if you can get in — they’re small and only have so much time — I can’t recommend the Lukeion Project enough for the subjects that used to constitute “A Classic education.”
Younger son loved the courses he took through them and has retained a fascination with Greek and Greek history.

AND there are a number of companies offering free access to their “learn at home” things too. So if your kids are at home, don’t let them waste their time and drive you insane. Make them learn. Heaven knows, they’ll learn more than at school.

Or if you’re home, and wondering if your job will survive, maybe you can access some of those and not think about it too hard.

Other than that, join me in a gigantic ARGH over the over-blown panic.

Note, I’m not saying that people at risk shouldn’t self-isolate/people who live with people at risk shouldn’t self-isolate, etc etc.  I THINK our fight should have been a massive campaign aimed at those people, keeping them safe, making sure they don’t suffer economically or educationally.

But hey, such targeted efforts at getting people to self quarantine — yeah, I know a lot would fail. You think this won’t? You can’t mother adults and some of them WILL be stupid — would be more effective.  But they wouldn’t take down Orangemanbad, or destroy the safety and prosperity of our country. So, for that media that’s a hard no, I guess.

 

 

There is an appeal to insanity, a certain joy in letting go and joining the howling.

The Mass Media which had found they’d lost their power when trying to lead us in the paths they thought rational, have discovered they can still scare us.  This makes them very happy, and has convinced them that they will soon have us voting for whom they want us to, by the power of stampeding.

I find myself in the position of an outsider, staring at the madness going on around me, and wondering what the heck everyone is doing and why.  And why everyone keeps howling and running around and insisting on being scared, even if they really aren’t. (And yes, I know what I speak of.)

I’ve been accused of being “superior” and of “priding herself on being rational” for not joining the panic fear.  I am in fact very afraid, just not of what the rest of the people seem to be afraid of.  Also, I don’t think I’m more rational than anyone else, in general. I mean, I do try to arrive at my opinions by thought but I am as much subjected to emotions as the rest of you. Probably more.

So why am I standing aside and staring, round eyed with horror, as everyone runs around as if they were preparing for a hurricane crossed with the black death?

1- I’m a depressive.  It goes without saying I’m a natural pessimist. Those of you who are staring at me as if I grew a second hand are not my closest friends. Those are nodding. They’ve talked me out of “the sky is falling” more times than I dare mention.  I think Dorothy who comments here often has a script entitled “Get Sarah NOT to kill herself now.”

So, why does this make me step back and stand aloof?  Well, I’m used to reality-check myself. If I weren’t, I’d have committed suicide in my twenties.  I panicked before you guys had even heard much about this.  And then I reality checked: the difference in cultures, (more on that later) the difference in our medical establishments and the way health is handled, the difference in populations (and that too). THE FACT NO ONE KNOWS THE NUMBER OF INFECTED, ONLY THE NUMBER OF AFFLICTED. And even so the deaths in other countries, while worrisomely high are NOT black death and ending civilization numbers. Particularly given the ages it impacts.

2- The fact that the media is obviously, insanely, gleefully trying to stampede us. And that I see the strings.

Look, as a writer I KNOW that the easiest emotion to evoke in your audience is fear/horror.  This is why many a beginning writer first finds success in those modes.  It is an easy emotion to create, it appeals to the most primitive part of the brain.  Mostly it relies on repetition, exaggeration and pushing worst-case-scenarios.

Which is exactly what the media is doing. I have absolutely no idea how many people have died right now, in the US of the Wuhan flu.  I can tell you, though that the number is ridiculously small for the panic we are seeing.  And most of these people had direct contact with a foreign source of infection.

Note I’m not saying it’s not a bad flu, or that it’s not going to create issues on its own.  The very fact that other countries will be much, much harder hit will cause issues in a world with interconnected economies. BUT what we’re doing is making those effects worse, far worse. And “let’s shut down the country” is not anything to stop this flu. Not really. There are rational measures, but none of these are being taken, and instead everything is being done that will make the crisis worse, if it gets bad (and no, I’m not blaming the president. This is a media driven show and he has to conform to the script or be destroyed in the heat of the moment. But dear Lord. NONE of this is rational!)

ALSO I have seen the media encourage panics all my life. NOT ONE OF THEM HAS TURNED OUT TO BE WELL FOUNDED. NOT ONE.  Now, even a blind squirrel can find a nut, and maybe they’ll  eventually pick up their little “the world is ending sandwich boards” for something that really proves lethal and dangerous. But I doubt it. Knowing how they perceive the world, and what they were indoctrinated with, they routinely think real danger — radical socialism! — is peachy-keen and will bring about paradise and that completely rational things — killing a terrorist in Iran — will bring about the end of the world.

So, I’m not saying when the media goes into one of their frenzies they’re ALWAYS wrong.  I’m saying if they told me brushing my teeth was good for my health, I’d spend the next 3 days finding studies on health and tooth brushing.

When evaluating information, minding the source is ALWAYS a good idea.

3- People aren’t treating it as if this were a real threat.  No, seriously. The media has got through to the back brain and panicked people, THERE, but the rational ape knows this is not really so.  So, while the dino brain runs around screaming and getting into fights over toilet paper — toilet paper is not made in China. How the heck this got crazy all over the world, I don’t know — the ape brain is going about its normal business.

This was illustrated for me by a friend who said her parents are losing their minds with panic….  but are planning to go to brunch with friends on Sunday.

These people are not at all irrational. The panic-suit is needed so the panicked and crazy with fear people don’t turn on you. However, you KNOW it’s not real.  YOU KNOW.

Which is in some blog (legal insurrection?) someone mentioned that people are preparing for Wuhan Flu was though it were a hurricane.  No, seriously. Yes, I’ve heard it, and you have too “If we all die, who is going to keep the lights on/the gas flowing/etc etc etc.”

Look at the demographics of the people dying. These are not likely to be your linemen, your power-plant operators.  They JUST AREN’T.  Unless our government goes ape-shit (not out of the possibilities, mind you, with the media going nuts) and decides to start willy nilly welding us into apartment houses as in China (how they’ll manage that, since most of us don’t live in apartment houses, I don’t know!) I don’t see the lights going out. Also, as I understand it, a lot of these are automated now. Lights, water, etc. The reason they fail in storms is being overwhelmed by…. well, the storm.  A virus is not going to run around taking down powerlines.

What people are buying is equally crazy, and it’s preparing for weeks (months?) without power.  Which is highly unlikely in the circumstances. As is running out of water. As is…. well, running out of bleach wipes, honestly, unless you’re like me and always use quantities of them so you can clean quickly.

None of the things people are panic-buying makes any sense. NONE. They’re acting like they expect a storm, or Godzilla to come through.

This is the sign of a completely irrational panic.

REAL panic would have people holing up at home with enough food for a month or two, after which this will have blown over one way or another.

Oh, and I was highly amused yesterday to find that despite the cancellation of schools, several local associations are offering early summer camps for while your kids are home for spring break “and beyond.”  I bet you can find them in your area too.

That’s not REAL panic. That’s cosplaying panic stimulated by the madness of the crowds.

4- Add to that that I’m always a little apart, a little different. No, I take no particularly pride in this, it just is.

This is partly my background, the fact I’ve lived in many countries and realize that they are not in fact “just like us” or “have a first rate medical system” (For EUROPE — snort, giggle.) Or whatever.

And partly the fact that born under national socialism and raised under international socialism I treat the news as a scrying means. They’re not the real truth, though you can find it in their entrails sometimes.

NOW WHY I AM IN FACT GETTING SCARED:

1- This panic reaction is entirely wrong.

I don’t mean just that we’re preparing for the Wuhan-flu-hurricane that will down power lines.  I mean something FAR more intrinsic:

We should be concentrating on protecting people AT ACTUAL RISK.  You know, the elderly and infirm. (And btw, why is obesity on the list of risk factors, other than the fact the west is obsessed with it as a cardinal sin.  Sure, it’s a risk factor for ALL SORTS OF THINGS, but obesity BY ITSELF doesn’t damage your lungs, or put you at a higher risk of flu/colds.  That alone tells me this is insanity. Now obesity can be a co-morbidity with things that damage your lungs, such as I gained a ton of weight when my auto-immune/asthma was out of control and I was continuously on prednisone, but trust me on this, living in a village where people died of trifling little colds, being too skinny was more of a risk than being too fat.)

IF we were being rational, all the media and the health services would be saying “If you’re under fifty and in mostly good health, don’t come running to ER or annoy your doctor because you might have this. Come to us only if you are in actual respiratory distress, not before.”  The public health people would be saying “If you have a relative in a nursing home, DO NOT VISIT.  JUST DON’T till we have a handle on this.” Because, social isolation beats being dead, honestly. They might promote things like facetime to talk to your relatives.  Oh, and they would be prioritizing testing AND isolation for anyone — medical personnel, relatives, etc — treating or looking after those people at risk.

THAT would be the rational and sane thing to do.  We’re not doing it. This “everyone is going to die screaming” panic is only going to make it harder to look after those at risk.

It’s almost like they WANT those people to die. And yes, that’s paranoia and the idiots are not that savvy.

2- Now Trump is standing astride the economy hitting it with bags of money.

It didn’t work under Obama, and it won’t work under Trump.

I do understand why he’s doing it.  But you know what would be better? “If you’re young and healthy, get out of your basement and go the frack to work.”

The country shut down yesterday afternoon. For an illness that impacts MOSTLY those over 65. We closed the schools and colleges. This as I have pointed out might not be entirely bad. Hell, you know, the kids probably learn more at home playing video games.  But we also shut down everything else.

It’s find if you can telecommute, but as someone pointed out in the comments, that a fraction of the population.  I don’t know. In the US we might be up to 50%. It’s certainly not everyone. And there are a lot of people paid by the hour who are out of work for the duration, and whose places of employment, from restaurants to stores to amusement parks might not recover.

I’m not a sports fan — to be fair, I’m too ADD to sit through games — so to me the shutting down of sports events means nothing but there are small businesses who already took loans to sell food or whatever at parades and sports events, who are staring ruin in the face.

The country is taking a MASSIVE economic hit where it’s real — not the stock market, which will come back — to protect children, the young, and the early middle aged from an illness that as far as anyone can tell has negligible effect on them. Probably less than the annual flu has.

Meanwhile, we’re creating economic situations and social situations which will make caring for the most vulnerable and at risk — to this flu and everything else — almost impossible.

3- The world is going to hurt. The world is going to take a hit like you wouldn’t believe.

I suspect Italy is the “best case scenario” for most Latin countries. The fact that I have elderly relatives in one of them doesn’t fill me with wonder and happiness.

And here is where cultural factors come into effect, things I don’t think even Americans who have traveled are aware of.

Early in this, a friend made some mention of Chinese men peeing in public, and said maybe they learned it from American college students. And I paused and went AHAHAHAHAHAH. No.

Peeing in public might be the default mode for the human male.  When I was little I had penis envy because my little male friends didn’t have to go in to pee, and lose their place in the game. (Yes, I know there are implements. Six year old me DIDN’T though.) BUT it’s not just a childhood thing. Always with the caveat that the Portuguese are more socially conscious now and this is reduced (but not stopped. I see at least a couple every time I’m over.)  I grew up with males peeing wherever they felt like it. Find a convenient wall, pee against it. Even if the wall is made of glass and someone on the other side is staring at you in horror (it was a phone booth. Dan and I were in it, calling my parents.)  I had to explain to my husband not to touch anything from about waist level down, including walls, light poles, etc.

Also public bathrooms in Portugal (and France, when I was there) are generally far less clean than in the US. The closer comparison would be porta-potties in downtowns infested with druggies…. and even then.  Even in decent restaurants in Portugal, I warn people going to the bathroom to take toilet paper AND soap (and usually have those in my purse to lend. Too many situations of not having either to hand.) as they’re not refilled nearly as often as they’re here. I’d be shocked if Italy is any different.

BUT there are other seemingly innocuous things that put them at higher risk.  Seriously, I’d forgotten about this — I don’t go out and meet strangers much when I visit my family — until my son reminded me: the kissy face.

I’m serious and this is why Latin countries will be at a greater risk: they kiss. They kiss A LOT.  Okay, not the guys, at least in Portugal. I mean they don’t kiss each other. Unless they’re related, and then often they do. But if there’s a female involved in any social interaction? She gets kissed by everyone else, male and female, INCLUDING STRANGERS SHE’S MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME.  Kisses at leave taking are also not unusual.  In church the “kiss of peace”?  It’s a kiss if there’s a female involved. If you’re a woman, you just got kissed by ten/twenty strangers.

Now these are face-kisses, but if you think they don’t carry a greater risk than a reluctant hand shake (in times of real danger of infection followed by hand sanitizer) you aren’t thinking.  And of course, at least for churches most of the attendance in Europe is over 60.

Then let’s talk social distance. I’ve lived in the US west for close on thirty years. Our social distance is “Ya’ll stay six feet away and shout, okay? That’s great.”  Okay, that’s probably exaggerating, but not by much. Three to four feet “distance” between individuals isn’t rare.

When I fly East, like for Liberty con, I feel the closing in as social distance becomes two feet. People are going by way too close to me. I want to sing “don’t stand so close to me.”

AND….. the Eastern US is still “freakishly large social distance” compared to Europe. And I understand Asia (never traveled there) is even closer.  I wonder how since I often made my way through Porto by virtue of my left shoulder, at busy times. But there it is.

Social distance. how many strangers do you rub up against or close as makes no difference in the course of your day?

The US is different in this because we were a fairly young culture when the germ theory of disease became known. It informed a lot of our culture. BUT in Europe (and Asia) the rational knowledge of the theory is overlaid on MUCH older structures. It doesn’t percolate so well. You might not want to kiss your brother’s work-colleague, but how will that affect his career? So you do.

Which brings us to another point: transportation.  Most Americans — much to the horror of the left — do transportation in GLORIOUS and MAJESTIC solitude.  At WORST, if my entire family is going out? There are five people in the car.

In Europe the RULE is public transport. And in cities most public transport is CROWDED.  I know this will be hard to believe considering how often I’m very ill, but it was far worse when I used public transport even though I was much younger.

Also their medical systems are mostly government controlled or regulated to such an extent that as in all government-created enterprises keeping appearances is elevated above treating the sick.  So they will LOOK like excellent health systems. The reality appalls almost every American who experiences it. (There are always exceptions and some people get lucky.)

So why does this terrify me?  Europe was already in an extremely precarious position. I think they’re going to lose people at “youngish” ages from this, say 50 on. Which means they’re going to lose a lot of the highly trained individuals that keep their tech and society going.  And yes, this will be affecting us.

What we SHOULD  in sanity be doing is figuring out how, and be ready to have other systems to go on line when Europe buckles. Because Europe WILL.

Yes, closing flights from Europe is PROBABLY rational. For one, Chinese were still coming through Europe (duh.)

BUT instead of hitting the economy in the face with bags of money and closing our economy down for the duration, perhaps we should be considering what factories/services/etc we’re going to need here if Europe (and a lot of Asia, though note the panic is far less there) goes dark.

And this is why I’m staring in horror and wonder while the mad hatter pours tea on the mouse’s head.  This is not just crazy. This is counter productive. ALL of it pretty much, except for the closing of flights is completely insane and will hurt more than the virus does.

At the back of my mind, too, there is a little voice saying “And what happens when after all this is said and done, there are maybe a hundred thousand people who die, and those from the oldest demographics. What then?”

The press should be aware that the next easy emotion to stimulate after horror is anger.

I know, I know, they think they can pin it all on orangemanbad, and that this will not only prevent the righteous beating they took in Great Britain, but will husher in their zombie-candidate-for-socialism (third term of Obama. Sure we want that, right?) and ruin.

I’m not ready to say they won’t succeed.  What I’m going to say is that if they succeed it will be a brief victory.  We have all seen them with their masks off, trying to bring about the death and destruction of the west, all in the name of getting power back.

They should consider that when it proves everything they said was a lie, including “the” and “and” and that the panic they stoked was EXACTLY the wrong panic and caused us to do the wrong things, people are going to remember.

May G-d have mercy on their souls.