One Trustworthy Commentator

     Thank God there’s still at least one:

     Please watch it, listen to it, and reflect.

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     I’ve been going on about this for some time, but mine is a very minor voice. Tucker Carlson reaches a much larger audience, a vast swath of America…but who is listening to what he’s saying? Who is contemplating what’s being done to us? Is anyone thinking about resistance?

     Here in the Vampire State, no one has risen up. No one of any stature has publicly screamed that the state lacks the Constitutionally licit authority to do what it has done. New York Metro, the fringes of which extend to my own abode, resembles a grave in its immobility. The fear of this virus, which has proved to be no more dangerous than the flu – and to the same age and health cohorts, at that – is too pervasive, and too intense.

     We have shackled ourselves out of fear of a microorganism.

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     There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy [i.e., God]. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them. – C. S. Lewis

     Fear is the aspiring tyrant’s best tool. Fear of violence; fear of disease; fear of the infirmities of age; fear of the future; fear of one’s neighbors; fear of one’s countrymen; fear of faceless others in distant lands. He who can make you afraid can make himself your master…and your fears need not be of him.

     But fear is not an objective aspect of reality. It’s an emotion: a reaction to some perception, whether real or imagined, that we find threatening. We can choose not to cower in fear but rather to face the perceived threat and take up arms against it. Yes, even a microscopic virus.

     Note that no government, no agency, and no politician can actually relieve you of the threats that make you fear. Only you can do that. Indeed, that’s the most ironic facet of our current condition: were Americans merely to practice enhanced hygiene, and protect our most vulnerable relatives from contagion, we would be out the back end of this Wuhan virus business in a few weeks, with no more fatalities than we’re suffering under this lockdown regime and with herd immunity, to boot. Instead we’ve surrendered our rights as Americans for absolutely no gain – and that’s to say nothing of the economic devastation the lockdown has wrought.

     But our politicians value our fear far more than our lives, our rights, or our economy. They’re doing their best to keep our fears stoked high. It’s what aspiring tyrants have always done:

     The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken

     And we’ve fallen for it.

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     I can’t go on any further about this. It makes me too angry. But I’ll propose a Gedankenexperiment for those of you who still have spines:

     Imagine a public figure – any public figure. Imagine that that public figure were to proclaim the following desire, openly on national television:

“I want you to be afraid.”

     Would you respect him? Would you kowtow to his decrees? Or would you become angry, perhaps angry enough to raise your own voice in opposition to him?

     Yet keeping you afraid — almost literally paralyzed by fear – is the principal aim of the tyrants who demand that you remain immobile in your homes. At this juncture, can you reasonably doubt it?

     Time for a closing quote:

     “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert

     Have a nice day.