U.S. News
Pandemic Response Is Our Vietnam
As during the Vietnam conflict, the poor and working class are the ones bearing the brunt of the cost of waging the war on the coronavirus.
Most scholars agree that America’s involvement in Vietnam was an unmitigated public policy disaster. In 2020, a new standard for monumental government failure has been set: our public policy response to the coronavirus, which has resulted in the establishment of a state-run religion of mandatory social distancing, a tyrannical public health police state to enforce it, and a never-ending “state of emergency.” The similarities between our misguided responses to Vietnam and the coronavirus are striking.
Our military action in Vietnam also began with a “state of emergency,” leading Congress to adopt the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which effectively launched America’s full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War. Vietnam is also regarded as the quintessential example of the dangers of groupthink, when President Johnson’s advisors refused to question a course of strategy and consider alternatives rigorously. Psychologist Irving Janis, who developed the concept of groupthink, based it on an analysis of President Johnson’s famous Tuesday lunch group of top-level advisors.
In March 2020, the same type of groupthink emerged regarding the virtues of unprecedented, deviant, and destructive “nonpharmaceutical interventions.” “Fifteen days to flatten the curve,” “Stay home/Save lives,” and “We are all in this together” were sold to us as patriotic acts, espoused by even the most devout conservatives, who would normally oppose overt government theft of property, services, and economic, personal, and religious liberty. Those who questioned the virtues of quarantines and lockdowns were vilified and censored from mainstream and social media as purveyors of misinformation or conspiracy theorists.
Mission creep was also a major factor in America’s involvement in Vietnam, leading to the rapid expansion of troops on the ground and bombing on a massive scale. In the “war” against the coronavirus, “15 days to flatten the curve” is morphing into 15 months (at least) to fully eradicate the virus. The endgame seems to be a quixotic dream of zero-Covid. Infectious disease experts are already warning us that vaccinations will not be enough to return us to normal.
Mission creep is often associated with willful distortion of information on the part of government officials. The intellectual architect and high priest of our state-run religion, Dr. Anthony Fauci, recently admitted that he has been lying to us about herd immunity, in order to manipulate our acceptance of coronavirus vaccines.
For many months, he cited 60% to 70% as the level of Covid infection/vaccination the country would need to achieve herd immunity. However, in an interview last week with the New York Times, this condescending, insufferable master of legerdemain admitted to slowly, but deliberately, moving the goalposts, until “the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.” This scientist is “following the science,” but unfortunately, it is political science.
Inaccurate statistics also played a role in faulty decision-making during the Vietnam conflict. General Westmoreland’s beloved “body counts,” or the number of enemy killed, wounded, or captured during an operation, were routinely overstated to overestimate progress and enhance funding and support for the war. In the Covid-19 context, both “cases” (overwhelmingly either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms) and deaths (with the virus, not of the virus) are overstated, to increase funding for the “war” against the virus and to magnify and prolong the “state of emergency.”
The same scientists from Imperial College London whose wildly inaccurate models stoked panic in March and April are wreaking havoc once again, with dire predictions of a “new strain” of the virus. This has prompted more severe lockdowns and travel restrictions in several nations. At the same time, recent studies showing how rare asymptomatic spread of the disease is (e.g., from the University of Florida) are virtually ignored by the media and politicians.
Another similarity between Vietnam and the coronavirus is that our politicians have once again fallen into what economists call the “sunk cost trap” and what psychologists refer to as “escalation of commitment.” In our courses, we teach students that decision makers should ignore costs already incurred and only pay attention to future or prospective costs.
During the final phase of the Vietnam conflict, many supporters of America’s military involvement invoked the following logic to support this policy: Since the U.S. had invested millions of dollars and thousands of soldiers had perished, any U.S. withdrawal without achieving its objectives would waste these significant sacrifices.
In a similar vein, politicians have invested substantial time, energy, and resources in promoting lockdowns (while simultaneously promoting themselves) and have deluded themselves into thinking that lockdowns are effective. Even conservative politicians have succumbed to this sunk-cost fallacy. They have already made a substantial “investment” in mandatory social distancing policies, even though the social costs of adopting these policies are enormous and large enough to offset any benefits from adopting draconian policies to “flatten the curve.”
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially said that Britain must “take it on the chin.” Now he claims that under no circumstances can the Brits “throw in the sponge.” Meanwhile, the website collateralglobal.org, inspired by the Great Barrington Declaration, which promotes the common sense/rational approach of “focused protection,” displays the data and numerous scientific studies that show the lockdown “cure” is much worse than the disease.
As during the Vietnam conflict, the poor and working class are the ones bearing the brunt of the cost of waging the war on the coronavirus. As Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, one of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, is fond of saying, lockdowns are a luxury of the rich. The elites and the professional class are comfortably shielded from the economic and psychological napalm of quarantines, lockdowns, and “reopenings,” while the working class, many of whom are “essential workers” and own or work for small establishments, will be nursing their wounds for many years to come.
The quagmire of Vietnam was also prolonged because there was no well-defined exit strategy, until President Nixon formulated one. In our current coronavirus quagmire, political leaders have also failed to outline an explicit exit strategy. We can’t expect the public health police state to voluntarily relinquish their grip on power. Similarly, governors and mayors who are being bailed out by taxpayers are also reluctant to cancel their hour-long press conferences. Infectious disease experts and other public health officials have never been so adored by the public. Their budgets have risen, and at the same time they are destroying our economies and societies and abusing our children. They have become the new generals loving the sweet smell of napalm in the morning.
Despite the similarities, the public policy response to the coronavirus is worse than Vietnam for one key reason: its pernicious effects on the young and future generations. During the Vietnam War, children did not serve on the front lines. Thanks to the public health police state, lockdown politicians, and teachers unions, children have been forced to sacrifice needlessly for the elderly.
Many of our children have been out of school since March, with no end in sight until everyone is “safe.” They must stay at home under house arrest so they can serve as unwitting subjects (like the rest of us) in our ongoing deviant social experiment. There is no doubt that our children’s future and the quality of their lives have been sacrificed to conduct this experiment.
Lockdowns have been especially hard for two types of children: (1) those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who live in cramped conditions in blighted neighborhoods and are victims of the “digital divide,” and (2) autistic children and other special needs kids. For many poor kids, schools, public libraries, and public park facilities constitute a welcome refuge from the turmoil, chaos, and potential abuse they may experience at home.
Stay-at-home orders for such children severely limit their much-needed access to these facilities, as well as social services, counseling, and extracurricular activities. It also makes them much more vulnerable to recruitment by gangs and organized crime, since employment opportunities are now extremely limited. Autistic and other special needs children have been especially hurt by the lockdowns, since they have severely limited access to treatment, as well as in-person education.
As suffering from the lockdowns mounts and states launch new lockdowns in response to “surges,” there is growing resistance. People are starting to question the failed strategy of lockdowns, much as they questioned the wisdom of LBJ’s Vietnam strategy. While nonviolent protest is certainly warranted, especially when it comes to the pressing need for our children to return to school, we need an end to the “state of emergency” that enables governors and mayors to lock us down in the first place. Note that these governors and mayors are locking down businesses and educational institutions that are complying with onerous Covid-19 regulations.
The evidence is clear that lockdowns are ineffective and highly destructive and yet, to quote the feisty Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré of Hurricane Katrina fame, our political leaders are “stuck-on-stupid.” Thus, it is time to resist lockdowns, much as citizens resisted during the Vietnam era. Resistance to lockdowns should occur along several dimensions. The first step is for legislators to rein in the power of governors to issue executive orders to shut down businesses. Such powers emanate from the permanent “state of emergency” that has existed in most states since March. In Arizona, State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita is seeking to end Government Ducey’s Covid-19 emergency declaration. She states: “We can deal with COVID-19 in a thoughtful and meaningful way without being under a perpetual state of emergency.”
Simultaneously, nonviolent protest against the most unreasonable restrictions, highlighting the toll on our children, is also warranted. The courts must also constrain the executive power of governors and mayors. While supporting lawsuits against shutdowns is vital, we also need to highlight and share human-interest stories on social media of those who suffer from lockdowns.
If these heart-wrenching stories go viral, the mainstream media is more likely to cover them and the politicians will begin to turn on their own experts. This is exactly what happened in Israel recently, when the farce of forced quarantine in coronavirus hotels for all who return from abroad was quickly overturned by the Health Minister. The infectious disease experts that recommended this draconian policy were embarrassed and soon after, overruled.
Our leaders need to understand that we want to return to normal as quickly as possible, especially given that a significant percentage of the truly vulnerable population will be vaccinated by the end of March.
U.S. News
New York facing streets without cops because of COVID vaccine mandate
“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis …”
A New York judge has rejected a union request to suspended the city’s announced COVID-19 vaccination mandate for police officers, meaning within just days there could be crimes to which officers simply cannot respond.
CBS reported the judge rejected the request from the Police Benevolent Association, representing some 24,000 police officers, to hold off on the requirement.
The union had wanted the temporary restraining order because the city has not made clear potential exceptions for medical or religious exemptions, and is refusing to give unvaccinated officers time to apply.
The vaccination rate among officers is about 73% so far, and the union has stated its position that getting the shots of the experimental COVID treatments is a personal medical decision.
“Today’s ruling sets the city up for a real crisis. The haphazard rollout of this mandate has created chaos in the NYPD,” PBA President Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement to CBS. “City hall has given no reason that a vaccine mandate with a weekly testing option is no longer enough to protect police officers and the public, especially while the number of COVID-19 cases continues to fall.”
It was the first such legal action launched against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to control city employee medical decisions, and an immediate appeal was being submitted.
The city’s demand had been that police officers, firefighters and others get at least their first does by Friday – or be left without pay.
The New York Daily News estimated that the deadline could leave a quarter of the city’s police officers at home without pay.
The publication noted widespread opposition to the mayor’s controlling dictate led to a huge protest in lower Manhattan earlier this week.
De Blasio said he believes in vaccine mandates – and suggests every mayor or governor should require workers to get the shots.
Despite whatever protection the shots provide, they also have been blamed for thousands of fatal side effects.
The New York Post noted that the issue was threatening not only police units, and that the New York Fire Department was preparing to shut down as many as 20% of its fire companies, “and take an equal portion of its ambulances off the streets.”
“The Department must manage the unfortunate fact that a portion of our workforce has refused to comply with a vaccine mandate for all city employees,” Commissioner Daniel Nigro charged.
“We will use all means at our disposal, including mandatory overtime, mutual aid from other EMS providers and significant changes to the schedules of our members. We will ensure the continuity of operations and safety of all those we have sworn oaths to serve.”
Reuters noted the chief of the firefighters’ union told his members to report for duty regardless of de Blasio’s order to get the COVID-19 shots.
Andrew Ansbro, of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said his members were “insulted” by de Blasio.
“I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty,” Ansbro said. “If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York.”
De Blasio’s mandate affects some 50,000 workers in New York, who have a deadline late Friday to prove they are vaccinated.
AP said the judge was Lizette Colon, and her ruling said the mandate can take effect as scheduled. But she also ordered city officials to be in court Nov. 12 to defend their demands.
Estimates are that about three quarters of the affected police department employees have taken the shots, while the figure is about 68% for fire department workers.
U.S. News
The Establishment Is Hiding Mass Resistance To Vaccine Mandates With The “Striketober” Farce
The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market …
It is perhaps a sign of the waning influence of the mainstream media that even though they have been incessantly pumping the concept of “Striketober” for the past month, the majority of Americans rarely mention it. What we do deal with on a regular basis, though, are the constant labor shortages across multiple sectors of the economy as well as the growing supply chain disruptions and stagflationary retail price hikes. The media notion of “labor regaining its power” is a background narrative that they are still struggling to plant in the public subconscious while the majority of people try to adapt to more serious concerns.
That said, the establishment doesn’t really care if the propaganda takes hold, only that they have a useful cover for the very real collapse of the US economy. It’s a kind of vicious perversion of the “fake it until you make it” strategy.
Striketober, like BLM, Antifa, and numerous other Marxist or Cultural Marxist movements has been created from thin air by a combination of news hype and globalist foundation funding. It’s important to first recognize that none of these leftist organizations would have ever been formed had it not been for the ample support of institutions like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. BLM, for example, was founded by openly Marxist leaders and got its start using millions of dollars in funding from the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation.
Many of the “workers unions” involved in various elements of Striktober also enjoy direct or indirect funding from globalist foundations. The Food Chain Workers Alliance, for example, receives funding from the Ford Foundation, and the National Domestic Workers Foundation gets ample money from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation.
As I have said many times in the past, all the evil people are on the side of the political left. All the billionaire elites and corporations they claim to hate are feeding them endless cash. Leftist labor strikes only exist because globalists want them to exist.
Of course, leftist strikes are actually a minimal problem. In fact, I suspect they are a deliberately fabricated theater meant to obscure the very REAL labor strikes among conservatives over the covid vaccine mandates. Let me explain…
We are all familiar with sensationalist worker walkouts like the Netflix protest over Dave Chappelle’s special “The Closer” which dares to make jokes about trans activists, a highly protected minority of people at the top of the leftist oppression totem pole. Most people have also heard about the workers strike among McDonalds employees over #metoo claims even though there is little to no evidence to support the accusations.
What we don’t hear much about is that the Netflix walkout was actually only a handful of real employees mixed with a mob of career activists that were bused in from elsewhere. We also don’t hear about the fact that the #metoo claims made against McDonalds are actually from back in 2018, and they are now being conveniently dredged up again as the country faces a labor shortage crisis.
These high profile strikes and walkouts are starting to eclipse media coverage of the true culprits behind the labor crisis – Namely the Biden Administration and blue state governments enacting global mandates, vaccine controls and covid stimulus.
The source of worker shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and a lot of our stagflationary issues can be traced directly back to the government’s covid restrictions and the covid welfare programs. Get rid of the restrictions, the mandates and the covid checks and over time the crisis will disappear. It really is that simple. However, the establishment does not want you to see it that way.
Marxist/Socialist groups are working feverishly to make hay with the covid protests and employee strikes in an attempt to attribute them to “worker discontent” over low wages and “mistreatment” rather than the covid mandates. This is nonsense.
First and foremost, wages have been rising exponentially in the past year for what I would call “zero skill workers” in the retail and service industries. When a potential employee with no valuable skills can walk into almost any chain restaurant or retail outlet and get $15 or more an hour on top of a signing bonus of hundreds of dollars just for showing up on the first day, there is no unfair disparity for the working class.
When the average minimum wage across the states is around $9 and most service workers are making nearly double that, there is no legitimate problem for Marxists to complain about. So, they have to make things up. To be sure, $15 an hour is not enough to buy a home or start a family on a single income, but people aren’t automatically entitled to home ownership and no intelligent person expects to launch a career in food service or retail. That’s why decades ago these jobs were filled by teenagers, not people in their 20s or older. Doubling the minimum wage only accomplished one thing int he long run: Much higher prices for everyone.
Workers might feel like they are being abused, but it’s not their paychecks under attack or their managers making sexual advances. These are petty concerns compared to the bigger issue at hand – Their individual civil liberties.
As noted, there are two major factors in worker shortages: The Biden vaccine mandates and state and federal covid stimulus programs which pay people more to stay at home than they would make on the job. THESE are the reasons for worker shortages and anyone that claims otherwise is ignorant or has an agenda.
Federal covid checks are not done yet. Contrary to popular belief the cash is still flowing through various programs including child credit programs. Also, most states continue to pump out covid financial aid on top of existing unemployment benefits. This is essentially Universal Basic Income and it’s not over by a long shot. Businesses cannot find enough labor because the government has bribed millions of workers to stay home. The socialists don’t like to address this problem because it conflicts with their Striketober fantasy, so they deny it exists.
The establishment is well aware that these actions are destabilizing the labor market and I believe the goal is to destroy the small business sector specifically. Small businesses cannot compete with corporations backed by trillions in central bank stimulus. They don’t have the resources to double wage rates for zero-skill workers or to offer large signing bonuses. They also don’t have the resources to police their own employees and customers to ensure these people are complying with vaccine passports and booster shots. Within a year the solid small business foundation of the US will be a hollow shell.
With the death of small businesses, all that will remain are international conglomerates that WILL enforce the mandates and threaten people with poverty and starvation if they refuse the vax. All other legal alternatives will be removed and that is exactly what the elites want. Without defiant small businesses there’s nowhere left for you to work or shop without the vax passport. Corporate monopolies are the tool governments are using to circumvent constitutional protections for individuals.
But as this process plays out the resistance grows. And, as they say, the resistance will not be televised.
The entire premise of Striketober and the rise of the “oppressed proletariat” is a farce, but there is a different kind of revolution brewing. The latest narrative does at least represent something new in the agenda to derail the US economy. For the most part we have been dealing with astroturf protests from Cultural Marxists in the form of crazed social justice warriors funded by globalist foundations. The focus is usually on exploiting cultural taboos or non-existent racism or sexism. The Striketober development is a much more classic rendition of old school Marxist sabotage, and it appears that it was slapped together haphazardly by establishment elites in order to diminish the VERY REAL conservative worker walkouts.
That is to say, from now on expect that if you walk out of a job or get fired from a job for non-compliance on the experimental covid vax you might be lumped in with a fake leftist movement and no one will mention the real reasons for your sacrifice. But what is the point of this psy-op? Don’t the globalists want to identify and demonize the millions of conservatives refusing the vax?
I am reminded of a story I read when I was a child about a conversation between an ancient Roman General and a Roman Senator. The senator tells the general that something needed to be done about separating and delineating the slave class from the free Roman citizens because often they all looked alike and were sometimes dressed alike. The senator suggested that the slaves be forced to wear black arm bands so they could be easily identified. The general disagreed, pointing out that if the slaves were given the arm bands they would finally see how many of them there were, and realizing the sheer size of their population the slaves might then be encouraged to revolt against the empire.
Now, I don’t know if this tale is historically accurate but I treat it as a parable. In the case of the vaccine mandates and the massive worker strikes among airlines, hospitals, police and emergency services, etc., the more the establishment tries to squeeze the US population with forced vaccination efforts the more liberty minded people slip through their fingers and fight back. If mass walkouts and strikes are attributed to conservatives and patriots standing against the mandates, then all the other “slaves” might realize they are actually legion. This would be bad for the globalists and their Reset agenda.
So, they are attempting to co-opt the vaccine walkouts and rewrite history in real time by creating a fake workers movement through Striketober. And no, it will not end in October, the media will be promoting this idea from now on. That way the resistance becomes convoluted and confused and the mainstream media can say the great number of striking workers are actually on the side of the political left battling the “capitalist machine”, not conservatives and patriots on the side of truth and freedom.
We are not supposed to know our numbers. By instituting a two tier society through vax mandates the establishment has made an error. They obviously assumed there would be far less rebellion against the passports. They obviously assumed that there would be a vast majority of support and the 10% or less of the population refusing to comply would be overwhelmed and surrounded by the covid cult. They figured we would be compelled by peer pressure and the fear of standing out, and that we would naturally fall in line. Instead, 30% to 50% of the population depending on the state or city or industry is in revolt and we are starting to see how many of us there really are across the country.
There are three things the covid authoritarians are predominantly afraid of – Liberty groups recognizing their true numbers. Those same groups organizing at the local and state level across the country. And, losing the mainstream narrative that they are the “good guys” and that we are the “evil insurrectionists”.
Striketober is just another desperate attempt by the power elites to manage optics in the face of unexpected opposition. Their efforts to terrorize people that refuse to become guinea pigs for a barely tested mRNA cocktail is backfiring. Eventually, worker strikes due to forced vaccination will culminate in greater acts of rebellion against the system. And, with each escalation of resistance the establishment will strain their weak think-tank brains trying to create new narratives to obscure what is really happening.
U.S. News
NYC Firefighters Union Head Warns Vaccine Mandate Will “Get Residents KILLED”
“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes.”
The head of the firefighter’s union in New York City has warned that Mayor Bill De Blasio’s vaccine mandate, which comes into effect next week is going to lead to “utter chaos,” with massive numbers of unvaccinated first responders prevented from doing their jobs and residents losing their lives. as a result.
In an appearance on Fox News Radio, FDNY Firefighter Association President Andrew Ansbro urged that “The response times are going to go through the roof. We’re just not going to be able to get to the emergencies in time.”
“Fires are going to burn longer. Heart attack victims are going to be laying on the floor longer,” Ansbro declared, adding “People in stuck elevators are going to be stuck there for hours if not days.”
Ansbro made the prediction that 30 to 40 percent of firehouses in New York City will be closed down if the mandate remains, with up to 45 percent of the workforce remaining unvaccinated.
“On Friday, when they’re tallying the numbers of who complied and who didn’t, they’re going to be faced with a stark reality that they’re going to have to close firehouses down,” Ansbro explained.
“The mayor is going to be faced with either sending us home or sticking to his guns,” Ansbro continued, adding “And his guns are going to get New York City residents killed.”
“When this city goes into utter chaos on Nov. 1, be ready to pick up the pieces that the mayor causes,” the fire chief further warned.
During a press conference Wednesday, Ansbro also said “I have told my members that if they choose to remain unvaccinated, they must still report for duty.”
He also stated that firefighters in the city feel “insulted” by the mandate and the probability that they will be prevented from working.
“If they are told they cannot work, it will be the department and city of New York that sends them home. And it will be the department and the city of New York that has failed to protect the citizens of New York,” Ansbro said.
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New York facing streets without cops because of COVID vaccine mandate
The Establishment Is Hiding Mass Resistance To Vaccine Mandates With The “Striketober” Farce
