Pause Now For A Moment Of Reflection

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on March 13, 2020, in Proclamation 9994 (85 Fed. Reg. 15337) is hereby terminated.

Passed by the House of Representatives February 1, 2023.

Passed by the Senate March 29, 2023 (yesterday).

The bill will pass. It’s very unlikely Biden will veto it.*

Did you hear about it in the news? Why not? What could possibly be more important?

I want to pause here. Please join me. Please join me to think.

Wise people reflect on the world in which they live. Join me at this juncture for intelligent, purposeful, thought.

Try hard to remember March 13th, 2020. Don’t fret over the panic of the day. Whatever Biden or his handlers are up to, the war in Ukraine, your taxes, what you want for lunch, or when you’ll plant your garden… that can all wait.

Concentrate. Free your mind of short term concerns. Try very hard to focus on one thing. Put away your cell phone. Turn off the TV or radio. Grant yourself a few minutes to think.

What has happened in your life since March 13th 2020?

Life revolves around what I call “points of inflection”. Often these are for you alone. They’ll become sealed in your mind; the birth of a child, the day a divorce was finalized, a car accident, a wedding. You will remember those moments because at that very moment, you committed them to memory with your whole heart and mind.

Depending on your age, you might remember different societal events; the first time man walked on the moon, the death of JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall. You will remember because it marked a change between before and after. You can tell a person’s age by what they remember. Is it the day the Twin Towers fell, or when Truman dropped the bomb on Japan?

Here’s a thing to ponder. The youth have learned the COVID lesson deeper than you have:

A new generation will remember the day their school closed. They will remember it until they die. They will remember the experience stronger and deeper than you because they had no adult life on which to lean. Their experience had disruption in a way you cannot share.

Life is short and many voices vie to distract you. The moments you lose through distraction or inattention make you less aware of the world.

The less aware you become, the less human you become.

I was traveling on March 13th 2020. I knew that day was a big deal. I watched with care.  During that day, I saw people in many places and observed every detail. What were they doing? How did they look? What was the moment like?

I’d known March 13th’s stampede was possible. I saw it coming. I’d bought a huge pile of groceries two weeks prior. I was prepared to self-quarantine according to my own rational logic. I had prepared as well as anyone could be.

On March 13th, I knew a day of inflection had arrived.

I didn’t know where it was going but I knew it was going all the way.

Up until that day, we could have pulled back from the precipice. After that day it was freefall. People were overreacting right at the gate! They hadn’t decided to use this new situation as a weapon against each other but it was inevitable.

People hadn’t started tearing their own nations apart. I believed nations, unlike people, would persist through inertia if nothing else. I was incorrect.

Nobody knew how far the pathogen had spread but the panic was already a nearly unrelated thing. It spread at a different rate to different places. Eventually the panic (and pathogen) spread to every developed nation. I saw the spread of the pathogen as a certainty. That’s just biology. However, I was shocked by the global range of panic.

I made a mistake that day. I underestimated the pain and division that would ensue. I overestimated human reason. I overestimated spiritual capacity. I overestimated societal resilience. I thought most people were, for want of a better word, adults.

I wasn’t aware of the vastness of human mental and emotional frailty. I had no grasp of the limitations of people in groups.

I’d read a lot of history. I was always baffled how whole nations stumbled into obvious blunders; World War 1, concentration camps, the fall of Rome. I was too limited to understand. In the last three years I have grown to understand. I learned how deeply and completely unreasonable people can be. Auschwitz, Caligula, the Salem Witch Trials, Barbarians crossing the Rhine in 406… these I understand in a new way.

I was not capable of imagining what the next three years would hold. Were you?

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” officially lasted 158 weeks. Nearly everyone figured it out years ago. A few poor fools will wear masks until they die.

The world is utterly changed. March 13th, 2020 is the other side of a vast gulf. I can’t return. You can’t return. The previous world is gone. At the core, my understanding of humanity has changed. Hopefully your understanding grew too.

We live in the aftermath. Not an aftermath of the pathogen but of the panic. There is no resilience in anything. In my nation shakes and sways. Elections look sketchy not just occasionally but often. Cities finance and foment their own riots. The dollar fades. We get used to shortages and swings in our food supply. Police don’t default to enforcing laws, nor do courts. The FBI does domestic spying. It either encourages or creates domestic terrorism. It does this openly. Every electronic device is built to spy on citizens. Young people have never had a privacy in their entire lives. For this reason and others, they’re emotional wrecks.

The changes of the last three years were baked in the cake. They were going to happen anyway. All they needed was the triggering event.

On March 13th 2020 the panic (not the pathogen) made things which were impossible into things that were coveted by the fearful, and subsequently inflicted upon them. Those who tried to use reason were stampeded; as was always intended.

This isn’t limited to America. Every human endeavor was shocked. Some were more resilient than others. No country was unscathed; except maybe Africa. Weaker countries (many of them) drift towards authoritarians and centralized control. Some countries (perhaps my own) collapsed. Weaker people fell apart. Families broke apart. Unworthy neighbors lost trust and worthy ones were embraced. Strong people were tested as well as the weak. Strong people, like strong societies (such as the Amish) emerged perhaps wiser and more stoic. The weak acted shamefully.

Everyone knows what they did during the last three years. We all gained the priceless gift of knowing our true nature.

Governments didn’t fare well. Countries are no longer nations. Government no longer obtain the consent of the governed. All hell breaks loose. Governments do things to which the people don’t consent. Governments themselves are hard pressed to know why.

Citizens to petition their governments for redress of grievances and are ignored. Some become subjects; trading freedom for the luxury of being someone else’s pet. They look to bureaucrats for instruction on how to live. Others become a nation unto themselves; rightly recognizing they answer only to themselves or God. Bureaucracies become more powerful and also more irrelevant.

Lacking reasoned lawful political discourse, chaos breaks out in unpredictable ways. France has riots. Not just occasionally but during most summers. So does America. So does Europe. So does Canada. So does Brazil. Riots are common everywhere. Several nations, simultaneously, teeter on the edge. It will continue so long as the question of honorable governance is neither addressed nor resolved.

Canada drifts aimlessly under Trudeau. Nobody knows who’s running America. Denmark persecutes farmers until there’s a wild shift in governance. Iran struggles to keep the lid on their self-made caldron. Israel is having riots this week. It’s not a question of “if” there will be more riots; only “how many”, “how destructive”, and “for how long”.

Governments everywhere fail to govern wisely. The UK flails about for years; trying to Brexit or not Brexit. Australia built quarantine camps and imprisoned people. Canada froze trucker’s bank accounts. America has 500+ political prisoners and periodically encircles its seat of governance with concertina wire. The next generation of New Zealand’s citizens (subjects?) will never be legally able to buy tobacco.

None of these were within the realm of imagination on March 13th, 2020.

You might think this is a sad moment. I think the opposite. It’s probably for the best.

My fellow human (at least many of them) would gladly put me on a cattle car. It was just as true before March 13th 2020 but I was too dumb to know it. I have earned that knowledge. I feel like God wanted me to know.

I also witness that evil fails as soon as it has power. Everyone bitches about America’s past president but nobody on any side claims the current American president has done well. Nobody responds well to corruption; of the soul or of the mind (dementia).

I formerly expected corruption to lead to defeat. I see now it’s self correcting. Every sketchy election or bureaucratic mess creates more failure. Instead of consolidating power systems just dissolve. Things look dire but it’s an illusion. Not a damn thing is well clenched in an iron fist. We can all see it. No failure is truly hidden. Gasoline and eggs cost triple what they did three years ago. People can’t avoid knowing what bureaucracies hide. People know why Portland has riots and Haybale Nebraska doesn’t. People know what a college degree means and its relative value compared to a good welder. People know what to think of 3:00 am shifts in elections. People laugh at headlines. People (perhaps grudgingly) learn.

I didn’t enjoy the last three years but, like a visit to the dentist, it was pain with a purpose. God didn’t create us to be idiots. He wants us to rise. He gave me a lesson I won’t forget.

Misery might be temporary. That which can’t go on, won’t. The dream before the fever breaks is the worst dream of all. I believe in my heart (and my mind) that things will be OK. Well mostly OK. Or rather they’re OK for me and I hope the same for you. They’re OK no matter how it goes because I don’t value the external like I once did.

I’m optimistic because I didn’t fail the test:

All through the COVID madness I did “the right thing”. I never oppressed anyone and I never let myself be oppressed. What more is there?

A world in turmoil is not my problem. It’s not your problem either. We are not the source of turmoil. Given a chance to stampede like an unthinking animal. We didn’t. I did nothing which I regret. How awesome is that?!?

Consider most politicians. Look in their eyes. They don’t have my feeling of optimism. They had the same options I did but they acted like beasts. They know it. I know it. Everyone knows. They act like the damned because they are.

Hopefully, the peak is over. (I can hope.) Think of it this way, Congress is the dumbest, most irrelevant, immoral, geriatric, gathering of corrupt blithering idiots to walk the face of the earth. Even they are reeling from the madness they did over the last three years. As the morons in Congress slowly gain some level of understanding in whatever protoplasm they use for a mind, there is hope for the rest of us. We were never that craven.

So please observe your world today. Take a look around and remember. This may be the day you recall as “before” when you’re living in the next (and possibly better) “after”.

A.C.

* Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history. I repeat the official truth every time I refer to Biden because I want everyone to hear it and face what they heard. Biden got 81,283,501 votes and every single one is unquestionable. Don’t look away. Watch it play out.