Trump was a phenomenon in politics and in our history. It seems Prudent to recognize that the greatest good he could possibly do… has already been done. Not everyone who gains center stage will be a King, someday. Some will merely be President of the United States, and then retire.
Aside from his extraordinary rise to the presidency, the most extraordinary aspect of Trump’s political chapter in his own life and in ours, was the unprecedented attacks he drew from the corrupt “leaders” who burrow into Washington and try never to leave. Self-service is nearly the only service that City knows… or recognizes. It stains and erodes everything, there.
In what can fairly be described as a sacrificial role, Trump exposed the nature and breadth of the rot we call the administrative state. He took the slings and arrows for all of us who supported him, and for those who didn’t, in fact. Like a lightning rod on a fragile, wooden barn, we are glad – thankful – that Trump was there during the storms. Yet we recognize that we should not get too close when the next storm threatens, for he also draws the lightning bolts that could injure us as well as him. It’s a real dichotomy, and grossly unfair.
Comfortably blind Democrats and leftists who may still pledge allegiance to this amazing nation, are certainly blind to the sacrifice Trump made to even run for president, and to accept the burden of election. His fortune shrank and he relinquished control of businesses that bear his name. We need not cry for him, but America owes him an historic debt of gratitude: he may have saved the Republic. Unlike most in Congress and in the 1200, or so, agencies, departments, offices and programs, The Donald did not go to Washington to become rich by hook or crook.
Like nearly every true leader, Trump has human flaws and among them are an outsized impression of his irreplaceability. He is vain and narcissistic and hates to not be the center of attention. Prudence does not envy him his retirement. Those flaws are damaging his legacy, now, and damaging the nation he deeply loves and served. To a great extent, his anger over a very questionable 2020 election hurt Republicans’ ability to win the Senate in 2020, and it is poised to hurt the same opportunity, again.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s need to be the center of attention and authority keeps him from playing on a team – only if it’s HIS team. For this reason, Prudence recommends that Mr. Trump actually retire from seeking office. He is a huge influencer, and that power can be put to good work to keep politics and leadership fighting for “America First.”
There is a very painful effect for someone in Trump’s position, to stop pushing to get revenge on political enemies who have lied and conspired to tear him down. Other Republicans will do well to sit down with him to map out how they will eventually bring down those who have broken numerous laws in their false accusations and fraudulent uses of federal power. It can take the “Trump Wars” off of the front pages and let local political battles be won by other conservatives. There are better, more unifying candidates for President, as hard as that is for Trump to accept.
So, Trump can be an heroic figure in history… or, he can be seen as a vindictive man who faded from importance, squabbling and lashing out at those who, genuinely, distorted the truth – even committed blatant, illegal fraud – to hurt him, personally and the country as a whole. Prudence recommends heroism.
As for other Republicans, honesty, morality and dedicated “America First” policies are the pathways to power and American restoration. We must re-frame the abortion issue with truth and pro-American views. The pre-born are Americans. It is time to make “pro-choice” the free choice to have sex, not to kill the baby. Our long-term success as a nation requires guaranteeing the rights enumerated in our constitution, including LIFE. We must restore the meaning of words and biological truth at the same time. Republicans must stand for life and define the pro-death attitudes of the left, for they include the death of the United States of America.
Republicans must stand for honesty, integrity and honor in education, including reasonable limits on the power of education unions. Among those must be political actions or donations on behalf of any officials able to affect or effect financial advantage for union members. The same should be true for all public employee unions.
No laws should be signed into effect if they are based on self-declared feelings, absent empirical evidence. Smart Republicans can create anti-discrimination protections for everyone that are not based on feelings, but on actions against the person of any American.
Criminal penalties must not be affected or distorted based on race or gender or gender-identity, only on the severity of the criminal acts, themselves. Citizens understand the difference between honest and equal application of the laws, and political favoritism that distorts public safety. Republicans must be clearly identified with public safety, and making clear the distinction between real safety and faux enforcement distorted by the left.
American foreign policy needs clarity and unquestioned pro-American patriotism. We must strengthen our alliances with British commonwealth countries and a handful of others who share our philosophies and anti-communism. At the same time we must be clear in our own anti-communism. Our military behemoth needs strict reform and reallocation of resources. There is too much General staff and not enough troops or hardware, or training. The next president must be especially tough with the 6 branches, making them lean and effective. All vestiges of “wokeism” and “social justice” must be weeded out of the academies and the ranks, right up to General staff level. Only then will foreign policy mean very much and will diplomacy achieve very much.
Fiscally, the federal budget must be cut, including welfare of every sort. The debt ceiling should be reduced every year until we are in balance, no exceptions. Every Department and agency should have its budget and cost / performance rating reviewed separately: no more “omnibus” budget bills and no more continuing resolutions. If ANY politician truly desired to reduce the federal budget / “money disposer,” he or she could put some brains together to create a campaign to sell the idea to Americans. We are doomed if no one does.
There is a reason America became great. The ideas that made it possible are so old they are new again. However, it will take a disciplined political force to make them attractive to Americans, themselves. Given the crass, petty squandering of political opportunity so sadly displayed in 2022, another party is needed, it seems Prudent to say.
Sun Tsu teaches that to defeat one’s enemy one must know who (or what) it is. The enemy, in its own defense, will always try to deceive, creating artifices against which its victim can expend great effort and resources, weakening itself to the point where the attacker can triumph with few losses. We call these artifices “Straw Men.”
So it is with good and evil. Evil never has strong footing but is very clever at creating false targets or disguises of its true purposes. Good can dissipate evil in a heartbeat but, being more trusting, gets diverted away from the target evil and even allies with it for a time, believing there is some greater good being served. And so it is with abortion.
The evil that is expressed through abortion is very clever. Abortion, we are told – and sold – is an expression of freedom and even civil rights. Most of us respect “freedom” and are quick to defend it. Most of us feel the same about individuals’ “civil rights,” and “Constitutional rights” even more. Being thoughtful and caring, most of us hate to admit that we have been deceived into defending evil when our whole intention is to defend rights, freedom and the Constitution – all “straw men” in this battle.
It doesn’t matter whether our core beliefs are religious, although such are great resources to bring into the battle against “abortion: “abortion” being the industry of the practice, now infecting medicine and even churches. Agnostics and atheists are free, certainly, to question our spiritual underpinnings as archaic or no longer relevant in a scientifically sophisticated world, believing that “science” has, or should, take the place of religious “superstition.” It doesn’t matter: religious truths and rules of honor are still operating regardless of any individual’s belief or disbelief. We still should strive to expose the Straw Men erected to protect abortion.
Among the other effects of the most famous opinion authored by Justice Harry Blackmun in 1973, Roe v. Wade cemented the repudiation of morality into federal law. Following the failures of moral struggles in the 1960’s, and as the federalization of welfare in the “Great Society” gained momentum, Blackmun conceived an invisible right to “privacy” that forced government’s hands off of virtually any moral judgements toward individuals’ behaviors. In effect, Roe justified evil, couching evil as a “right.” Historically, under a basically Christian impetus toward responsibility for one’s actions (essentially answering to a greater moral code than an individual might create for him- or her-self), individuals were free to be stupid, or to simply fail, but not to be immoral. Those who fought against immorality, or for a greater morality, were lauded and rewarded in society. Those who worked for licentiousness had to hide their purposes, often appealing to sympathies for the confused or otherwise “unfortunate” members of society who turned to an immoral path as their “only” means to elevate themselves from still worse circumstances. Straw Men on the march.
One need not follow any of the major religions to be uncomfortable at the destruction of unborn babies. If one is “religious” in outlook, he or she recognizes a more-or-less direct connection to God for every gestating child. This imparts a more-or-less direct responsibility – an obligation – to protect the holy innocents, there being no person of greater innocence than a pre-born baby. We should recognize the straw men arrayed against morality as those who seek to protect the abortion industry.
First is the claim that what has been conceived and is growing in the womb, is NOT a baby. It is merely a “fetus” which, in the view of abortionists, is a “mass of cells.” By implication, the proto-baby is a “foreign invader” and obligating the host-mother to protect and nourish it is a form of slavery or oppression. This argument is not biologically sound, nor is it morally solid. Humans, generally, are sympathetic to “baby” anythings, be they chicks, lambs, puppies or kittens, even heifers, foals, piglets and hippopotamuses. By great dint of effort, we have been divorced from the same emotions regarding our own babies. Indeed, appeals for donations to feed orphaned animals are far more successful than for the prevention of child abuse. How grotesquely odd; who benefits from this strange incongruity?
Women who have “bought” the entire narrative of oppression and “not a baby” still are likely to suffer some separation anxiety, even sadness, after an abortion. The older the fetus the more likely the grief. Who was that baby going to be? Would he or she have loved me? Blackmun found a right of privacy that flushed the destruction of the unborn clear of morality or meaning; the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, he couldn’t find. Interestingly, 90% of women who consider abortion choose to become mothers after seeing an ultrasound test and hearing the baby’s heartbeat.
Abortion can be rationalized with sufficient hatred, yet the essential child-mother bonding that commences very early on after conception, is real. More than simple hatred is needed to convince a mother that her irreplaceable role can be dissolved by mere hatred of a “growth” in her belly. It is a special virulence that brings a woman into an abortion provider’s lair, and it has to be carefully taught. For many abortion advocates, the essential hatred is hatred of male oppression. Such a transference of emotion is another variation of the Straw Man syndrome.
The country appears to be divided over the question of easy access to abortion on demand. This means that abortion advocates want abortion to be available within a bus ride, inexpensive or covered by insurance, and bound by few, if any, limitations.
The divide seems to follow party lines, with those on the left: liberals, progressives and socialists, the most in favor of unrestricted abortion; conservatives and Christians the least likely to approve of abortion on demand. The Democrat party has devolved into the party of death; it seems IM-Prudent to identify as such. Advocating for the most premature death possible is a form of evil. For religious citizens, it is proof of the actions of the “Devil,” which is to say, “Deified Evil.” Some call him Satan. Whether one “believes” or doesn’t, abortion is never as “nice” as the RIGHT to choose one. Even pro-abortion advocates should be able to recognize that pro-lifers who believe in the sanctity, or sacredness of innocent life, cannot compromise with the killing of that life.
It is worth wondering about the nature of the anger generated among pro-abortion advocates. It seems, well, out of proportion. Where pro-lifers might sing hymns or pray or simply try to speak with those heading into an abortion clinic – and this is understandably upsetting to those who have decided that death of their proto-baby is a solution to life problems – pregnancy support agencies are more likely to be vandalized and threatened. Where laws have been passed to protect access to abortion clinics and to prevent “harassment” of potential abortion clients, there are none that restrict the same for pregnancy support centers. Laws against vandalism and arson exist locally, of course, but seem to be less well enforced than the FEDERAL laws protecting the abortion industry, even when the industry, itself, breaks federal laws.
Demonstrations by pro-abortionists exhibit intense angers and even hatreds for pro-life defenders. One wonders why feelings are so high and angers so hot, in favor of abortion. Often there are threats of retaliation against those who oppose abortion. “If abortion isn’t safe, then neither are you!” Most pro-abortion / pro-death advocates have never suffered an abortion, yet they turn red in opposition to pro-lifers. Why? Clearly, if motivated to join a demonstration in favor of abortion, an individual believes he, or usually she, believes that a gestating baby is not a baby. Perhaps he or she also believes so strongly in Constitutional rights that the risk of breaking laws is well worth the righteous defense of such rights.
Yet, the only Constitutional right most pro-abortion advocates have ever defended is the right to terminate pregnancies. Is it just to defend the practice of licentious sex? Is the responsibility for the consequences of fornication so foreign a concept that the right to abortion must be defended? Is it that simple? It seems not.
Obviously, pregnancy resulting from rape is a special case, as is incest, and to protect the health/life of the mother goes without question. Requiring birth of a baby in these cases is cruel and unusual punishment, and society is not prepared to take that step. Neither is Prudence. Still, the baby is completely innocent in any case. We have to arrive at an agreement of person-hood at some point in gestation, whereupon Constitutional rights apply. We have not been able to do so.
It seems as though the right to kill innocent life is behind – or beneath – it all. It is an act that is as anti-religious, anti-God as is possible. If abortions were committed by sociopaths on the sidewalk, who then held the dead baby aloft like a battlefield triumph, we would arrest and incarcerate that evil person until his trial for first degree murder, a capital offense! Rightly so. But hiding the act away behind “clinic” doors and surgical gowns and rubber gloves enables us to defend it as a solemn right. Solemn rite, more like.
There are many forms of conspiracy of which average citizens have some inkling or suspicion, despite, or perhaps because of the concerted mendacity of government officials and agencies, including our military bureaucrats. Particularly since the Biden administration took control, world politics and military relationships have become more dangerous, more conspiratorial and far more difficult to control, let alone understand. Naturally, Americans are much more nervous and feeling isolated, as we probably should. With China encroaching on our spheres of influence and on numerous allies like Canada, Columbia, Panama, African nations and Europe, itself… even Hungary, the “world” seems to be ganging up on the U. S.
This is a rather abrupt turn of events. One has to wonder if it’s all a matter of incompetence and lack of understanding, or if key power centers in the U. S. are executing a plan. Can these questions be answered?
Was Covid-19 a strategy or unfortunate accident?
Is the widespread “legalization” of very dangerous marijuana and the onslaught of lethal drugs flooding our neighborhoods, just wretched capitalism or an element of intentional weakness that makes sense to some people?
Is the attack on Ukraine part of an “approved” plan by globalists to weaken NATO and the U. S.?
Is the “attack” on oil and gas in the U. S. part of the same plan?
Where did the basic plan to expand “transgenderism” among grade-schoolers originate?
How is it that major hospitals suddenly coordinated with the LGBTQ+ agenda and public schools to begin performing transgender mutilations and sterilizations?
Is the pressure to give virtually everyone from age 5 and up the modified RNA injections part of a larger objective of weakening individual freedom, lower general health and possibly population control?
Who, or what country(ies), actually benefits from the dramatic changes in U. S. monetary and immigration policies?
Who, or what country(ies), benefits from election fraud?
Who, or what country(ies), benefits from soft-on-crime policies in major cities?
Who, or what country(ies), benefits from high inflation in the U. S.?
Who, or what country(ies), benefits from restricting food production – reducing fertilizer use and sequestering productive acreage?
These are all rather sad questions to be able to posit. How could so many negative policies suddenly descend upon our nation and people? Can they all be parts of tragic, unavoidable coincidences? Or, could they be coordinated from… well, somewhere? Someone? Some group?
Can we put much credence into the idea that Joe Biden, a man whose mental state requires guides and “handlers” at all times, actually believes in what he says or does, or that he thought up the set of policies he has put into action?
Or, God forbid, but not an impossibility, is it possible that leftists/globalists in the United States’ “deep state” have considered the evolving relationships and power of Red China, the problems and responsibilities of American freedom and nationalism and the blandishments of the World Economic Forum in terms of a financial control model of vastly smaller populations, and decided that the only answer to the possibilities of wars and nuclear conflict is to throw in with the W.E.F. and establish a global government able to negotiate with, and even coerce China into coexistence? Perhaps systemic treason has been sold to the oligarchy as salvation.
Politics is more than pointing out the lies of others, Prudence indicates. So too is how people and societies organize themselves and their governing structures and technology. Even more, so too is religion and ideologies of various kinds: much, much more than pointing out the lies of others. There are larger pictures to take in and analyze and critique. After all, do artists lie? Are they, then, no longer artists?
Life is art… or at least the creation of an artist – an artist who tries to teach his/her subjects how to expand and beautify the painting in which they reside, on ever better canvas and frame, and in brighter, truer colors. Life is the basis of the greatest artist’s greatest work. Eventually life takes us to the edge of the canvas and what we call death results, but death is not the basis or the subject or the purpose of the painting. Death dealt for selfish, craven reasons before the edge of the canvas is reached, destroys not only a bit of life but the integrity of the painting. It’s source and perpetrator must be expunged, cleansed from the art that is life, for it/he/she has no place here.
Details of the art of life can be studied and understood a little better, and a little better, and a little better, still. Important to the beauty of the multi-billion points of life that comprise the fulgent artwork of life on Earth, is freedom to act in concert with the artist’s intent. Were there no options, no imagination, no whimsy, no beautiful choices, then the painting would be dull in color and harmony, smaller and devoid of love, the one color that is always the hardest to mix or apply, and the most vivid.
Holding the whole creation together is the love of life. Here and there, created in love but, somehow, twisted to love death, itself, bits of life, humans, develop the love of death and the “art” of dealing death. They claim to abhor terrible, brutal, violent death, yet do nothing within public policy to put a stop to it. On the other hand, the same people use public policy to accelerate hidden, “life-saving” death, like abortion and vaccination. That’s where the art of death exists, first from euphemism and then, only in unseen places, by terrible, brutal violent death. In either case, the very presence of death-lovers amidst the beautiful artwork of life causes the artist’s paint to bead up, unable to blend or enrich the near-perfect painting alluded to; it leaves blank, colorless blemishes.
Freedom, or the absence of freedom, is like that: devoid of color, particularly vibrant colors of creativity, joy and charity. Humans are designed for and have evolved to flourish in an environment of freedom – we’re “tuned” to what we consider to be beautiful and harmonious – and there are “rules” for being free. Without the rules, which are not limitations, in application, but better described as guidance, humans can easily slip into license and corruption, both mental and physical. Where this tendency has begun to concentrate we can see that the inherent beauty of human evolution has been dulled, and created still more areas where the artist’s paint has beaded up, failing to mix and blend and enrich the entire picture. We have names for these “rule-breakings.”
The first name describes corruption of the heart; we call it hatred. It has many manifestations, but all of them must be taught, it turns out. Every cultural tradition seems to include an identification of the “first hater,” which is the same as saying the “first liar.” Lying to other humans is an act of hatred: hatred of the inherent beauty of another human. It declares that the hater who is doing the lying has no respect for the value and integrity of another person… or even of a country full of other persons. Hatred is very easy to spread around when haters don’t even realize they are hating others, and when they may not even realize they’re telling lies!
So, the simplest form of heart-corruption is lying, but it’s not always a matter of lying to others: humans can be led to lie to themselves. That’s an environment wherein there is neither much debate nor alternatives based in pure truth. A small initial lie, like “this drug will make you happier,” can lead an inherently beautiful human to tell him- or her-self that he or she is not worthy of the beauty that others still enjoy. Nothing good flows from that belief. Even worse, rather than trying to convince such “lost” people of their inherent beauty, political forces try to make reinforcement of the new self-lie much easier. It’s called respecting “civil rights” but it is an ugly perversion of the beauty of human life. It also seems to be contagious, tending to infect younger and younger, beautiful humans.
At some point, societies develop a means of “enforcing” the rules of freedom so that the greater “good:” the maximum number of humans being able to survive, grow, create and have successful families and children, is assured. Except for those whose freedom is stripped from them for varying degrees of failing to follow the rules of freedom, the enforcement paradigm works fairly well until a fresh lie is introduced: enforcement “hurts” too many people. The political/police enforcers are quickly led to still another form of hatred-lie: “hurting so many of our fellow humans is not who we are as a people” and that ending a lot of enforcements is the “right” thing to do.
Now the artist’s beautiful painting becomes even more dull and hard to look at by humans who are still mostly beautiful… and hard to understand, as well.
Soon, because political power and re-election trumps everything, confused humans are led to hate those who refer to rules of freedom as being anti-freedom: the worst of all sins. The defense of “freedom” for those who are already in the business of lying, readily morphs into the defense of licentiousness, at which point every person or institution who defends adherence to the “rules” for freedom, is identified as an enemy of “freedom” or of “democracy,” neither of which is defined. The evil intent of anyone opposed to them, however, must be virulently opposed.
We can Prudently see, now, that hatred is more than the first name of rule-breaking: it’s the only name of rule-breaking. It manifests as lying, and therein lies the complexity of hatred: the myriad kinds and styles of lies that are told to us and by us. The struggles between truth and lies describe most of human history. Prudence thinks humans have become LESS truthful over the centuries that have led us to today. Certainly this is true for the United States. Can we keep excusing lies from various groups, agencies and institutions simply because the liars believe what they are saying?
The great painting called “Life” is still beautiful, but becoming less so at a frightening rate. The single metric of suicides teaches us that increasing numbers of humans no longer perceive any beauty in living. The great lie of abortion has blazed the trail… no – blazed the 8-lane expressway toward death as a “solution” to the problems of life. Great, ugly swaths of the painting have beaded-up, unblended colors that look muddy rather than vivid, because of abortion. Will truth ever overwhelm the hopelessness of abortion?
Nearly as much of a blemish on the painting called “Life” are the compound lies of transgenderism. Here, the merchants of Death convince very young people to commit “suicide of the self,” even as they convince their parents that those same merchants are “educators,” preparing their children to be successful citizens of the United States of America. Each child was born to be a certain person, a certain soul, and to conquer the challenges for that person, male or female. Instead they are coached to either become sex objects at grade-school ages, or to “kill” their selves by undoing their sexual being with a grand pretense that it is possible to believe two diametric ideas simultaneously. It is a means to living a lie, also destroying reproductive viability. As it has spread through education in many states and countries, the painting has become duller, with sharp edges between vibrancy and death and dullness.
The elements of vibrant, vivid paint, including the color of love and not of death or hatred, still exist, and there are yet a few million of the artist’s apprentices still active and available. We who are given the opportunity to co-create our painting – which represents a lot of faith on the part of the artist – often lose sight of the harmony and natural beauty that we have taken for granted. For a hundred reasons we insist on trying to blend ugly, dull colors, believing that our odd intentions will render a better beauty than that created for us by the artist. Yet our ugly paints keep beading up and leaving growing patches of ugly dullness amidst the original beauty.
Still, we push on, insisting that we know better than the artist of our life painting. As the blemishes expand, those stuck in the ugliness try to blame the co-creators of beauty for the contrast, as though reducing the overall quantity of beauty and harmony would make everyone feel accepted and grant equity to all. To their dismay, however, the rules of freedom don’t allow for it and, to the purveyors-of-ugliness’ horror, those are the rules of beauty, as well.
If broadcast words could be weighed, it seems Prudent that they would amount to a great, ponderous weight… and more than weight, a great mass possessed of a great inertia. Fortunately, since most have no “God particles,” they bear no weight at all. The God particle of speech is a mix of logic and sense or, put another way, reason and truth. When enriched with God particles, speech carries a lot of weight, influence and ability to move vast nations, like ours. We used to call it “common sense” but it is so uncommon, now, that we rarely hear that term.
So it is with most pronouncements and policies emanating from the federal government under the Biden administration. Daily, and sometimes more than once a day, the Biden regime states a policy that is questioned only by a few, with most of media agreeing with leftism, and almost inevitably it is a policy that cannot be justified on logical bases or on (uncommon) sense. A very clear example of this phenomenon is “Biden’s” (read: Obama’s) open borders policy and relaxing of immigration laws. Millions of people have flooded (read: invaded) our nation while the Biden administration states that “…the border is secure…” There are neither logic nor truth connected to this policy.
The ”Green New Deal” is a prime example of this process of misleading. The “GND” is a lie based on a lie, but elevated to spiritual truth despite the near absence of “God Particles” in any of it. There are truths nearby to it, but they lead in a very different direction from where the “Greens” intend to force humanity. To start, the degree of human impact on the rate or type of “climate change” is immeasurable, as in unquantifiable, and our ability to alter it is unknown, if any. Hence, it is completely illogical to destroy societies and standards of living in order to “fix” climate change. Climate has been changing for as long as there has been an atmosphere on Earth: warm, cold, ice ages, sweltering swamp and warm oceans, dry, wet and every mixture thereof.
The major effort of the “GND” is the changing of energy sources from so-called fossil fuels (and nuclear) to so-called “renewables’ or “natural” energy sources. The problems with this “conversion” grow destructive because the proposed alternatives are available only intermittently. The green theory depends on wonderful batteries to capture energy when it’s available. Such batteries are very ecologically “dirty” to make and to later recycle. When all the energy inputs are calculated to make (now) lithium-ion batteries, and to create, erect and maintain solar and wind-power collector/generators, there is no advantage or even equivalence to the ecological cleanliness of our cleanest and most efficient uses of oil and gas and even coal.
However, leftists have adopted the green new deal as the best way to replace the capitalist, free-enterprise economy. If it hurts the majority of Americans it seems to be of no concern of theirs, if not their intent. Their claim is that we must “decarbonize” in a decade or so or the planet will be destroyed by climate change and we’ll all die. Human life is based on carbon. Decarbonizing includes, in “green” theology, that there are too many people as well as too many cows, and too many farms using too much fertilizer growing food for too many people. It’s not a pleasant concept. Still, if we discard most of the progress civilization has made, both technically and politically, the Green gods will be pleased and will make the Earth more perfect for those people self-judged to be better than most and deserving of longer lives.
Our Military posture is another source of abundant fallacy. Any policy that involves “woke” theories of racial and sexual identity is fundamentally untrue, yet both now appear to govern “military” thinking and practice. We annually entrust hundreds of billions of dollars to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military branches, ostensibly to keep the country protected by maintaining overwhelming strength and prowess, both technological and human. Instead the Pentagon has elected to cater to trangenderism – its own body of fallacy, if not phallacy – equal rights for women, a mixed bag of strength and weakness and waste, and politicized medicine, to wit, mandated “vaccines” that don’t work and risk the health of personnel.
The vaccine mandate error, alone, has cost thousands of trained – expensively trained and experienced – soldiers, sailors, airmen and women, and marines, their positions “in” the military. What a stupid waste. Clearly there is no capacity for admitting egregious errors by top “brass” or their civilian counterparts. Altogether, over the past several years, their efforts have weakened the U. S. military. It seems that this is failure of the grossest order. Has anyone lost his or her exalted ranked position for this failure? Not that Prudence can recall; with a group of relatively unintelligent far-leftists holding executive power since January 2021, we’re not likely to hear of any in the immediate future, either.
Just the egregiously damaging withdrawal / retreat from Afghanistan in August of 2021 should have resulted in a dozen or more high-level firings and resignations. The only person forced out of service is a Lt. Colonel who had the temerity to point out the multiple failures being executed in that withdrawal. Shame on us for tolerating, even rewarding such stupidity; shame on us for electing “executives” who employ stupid ideologies for U. S. policy. God save us.
One way to look at our current national condition is from the top of the Mountain Of Lies. It’s a better viewpoint for observing the accumulating effects of dishonesty upon the health and strength of the nation to which it is dished on a literal daily basis. Sometimes there is illumination provided by organizing lists of items that share one or more parameters. It will be Prudent to consider the entirety, if not enormity of the following list of lies on which Americans’ lives depend:
LAW. Our history and culture are replete with real and literary conspiracies based on subversion of laws. To Prudence, undercutting the law is the worst of all lies. Peace, safety, freedom and life, itself, depend on honesty in matters of law. It is still worse when it leaves the individual level and seeps into “official” policy and action – denying or subverting the law, that is. We can see the scope of damage that official lying can do, by reflecting on the completely fabricated “Russia” conspiracy that politicians and law-enforcement agencies attempted to pin on Donald Trump before he won election as 45th President, and through much of his administration. Subverting federal laws only expanded after that.
A few people lost their jobs at the FBI, but, so far, not their pensions! The message is that anything illegal done against Donald Trump is not considered to be nearly as bad as illegal acts taken against some other American citizen. Yes, you broke the law, but it doesn’t bother us enough to apply legal sanctions – wink, wink. Subversion of law: one of the worst kinds of lie.
But, unfortunately, the unprecedented crimes against Trump are not the worst in terms of how the citizens of the U. S. are besmirched by government lying. We have to look at immigration and border policies and practices since Joe Biden signed that stack of executive orders on January 21st, 2021.
U.N. and U.S. rules for “refugee” and “asylum” status are pretty loose, subject to multiple steps of acceptance despite previous errors or even untrue/fraudulent applications. A judge can always accept some claim of good reasons to submit fraudulent statements in order to obtain safety unavailable in their country of origin. In other words, it is subjective at almost every step. Those who hyperventilate over “loopholes” in tax laws are singularly unconcerned about the sieve of loopholes in immigration law. Interestingly, many of the possible claims for asylum are based on non-binary sexuality. However, there are laws and regulations that govern the processing of asylum claims and of asylees, themselves. These are being ignored at the President’s direction, leaving millions of illegal entrants in our country with virtually no way for our erstwhile protectors to monitor or arrest them when they fail to appear for “hearings” required by law.
It’s all part of “Progressives’” intention to dissemble our Constitutional Republic. Every person connected to the Biden administration who comments on “the border,” has lied about it, and quite consistently. Those are bad lies, sure enough.
LEGISLATION. Once upon a time in Washington, representatives of the people and representatives of the states would diligently research and debate, in both Houses of Congress, the federal budget. Presidential administrations would cook up budgets with their own plans and hopes, including the increased spending inevitably required by each and every one of the 1,000 or so executive departments, offices, agencies and “black” projects. Congress, politically, would dissect parts of it, replace parts of it, gain hours of news coverage about their essential work, and eventually pass some form of it, including myriad political advantages for the parties holding some level of power: earmarks. And, always, plenty of “pork.”
The two great sources of power in Congress are 1) Spending; and, 2) Taxing. No matter how motivated or honest a new congressperson may be, fairly quickly he or she becomes either purposefully corrupt or casually corrupted by the systems of Congress. The orientation process for newbies includes explaining why it is that what each feels is the right thing to do… cannot be done. In order to accomplish a small bit of what spurred the campaign to enter Congress, much has to be compromised. That is the economic dynamic of Congress – not right or wrong, but bartering for good and not-good. With the number-one goal of everyone in both Houses being re-election, the barter system quickly becomes bartering to gain re-election benefits. Voting on the so-called “budget” offers dozens of barter opportunities, and so it goes. It is inherently corrupt and corrupting, which means that our fresh new representatives – House or Senate – must lie to us at their first opportunity.
Then, there are the aggregations of spending and taxing ideas that are given names like, “The Inflation Reduction Act.” These mountains of malarkey cut and pasted by the “power brokers” who then present a 1,000-page or 3,000-page pile of words with hundreds of new “laws” included and call for a vote within 24 or 48 hours. No one can read or understand the implications all of it before voting, yet there is a great trumpeting of accomplishment. Most of the time prior to the vote is spent by each “yea” voter to find something – anything – that he or she can tell constituents was “accomplished” for their benefit, including how their representative “fought” for them against the evils of Washington. Still, where’s the truth? There are $31 Trillion in the national debt that display 65 years of great lying to American citizens.
IMMIGRATION: No country is a greater magnet for emigration than the U. S. Despite the constant Marxist drumbeat of “systemic” racism, imminent murder of blacks by police and unfair incarceration of pathetic, somewhat innocent or non-responsible prisoners, people of color flock to our southern border by the millions. Some just walk in and say the magic words claiming asylum. Our Border Patrol officers spend virtually all of their time “processing” the flood of people from up to 100 countries(!). In The meantime, about 25% as many as claim asylum escape through our poorly secured border, carrying tons of fentanyl and other drugs (drugs that kill over 100,000 young Americans every year) as well as carrying plans in some of their heads to commit terrorist attacks.
It is one of the prime responsibilities of a President and administration to prevent these very circumstances. For a government to NOT fulfill this obligation requires two forms of “untruth:” 1) a purpose other than protecting the United States or its citizens; and, 2) a constant barrage of utter lies about the “secure” status of the casually breeched southern border, supporting the pretense of an administration that is fulfilling its vows. Typically, there is a penalty to pay for lying, much more so if the lie causes injury or cost to the subject(s) of it. What sort of penalty is appropriate for this grandiose lie?
The upshot of this close-to-the-worst-of-lies is that about 4 MILLION illegal entrants are scattered across the country. Each of them is a living, breathing, expensive lie. Along with them are the nearly 1 MILLION “gotaways” who evaded apprehension thanks to President Biden’s utter… no, purposeful… failure to complete the border wall, which would at least have channeled prospective entrants to limited points of entry. They are all lies, too, whose very presence implies some sort of right to be inside our borders. That there is no such right for nearly all of the 4 MILLION and the 1 MILLION, simply compounds the grotesque lie this administration has been telling American citizens.
COVID: This compendium of lies began 10 years ago as the great Dr. Anthony Fauci funneled NIAID grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for gain-of-function research on the SARS-2 coronavirus. He has denied that purpose, of course, which simply shows that lying is common in the federal government’s hundreds of agencies. Fauci’s NIAID agency of the CDC earned millions in royalties from helping Moderna develop its mRNA “vaccine” (the vaccine that doesn’t prevent infection, doesn’t create immune response and doesn’t prevent contagion), which Moderna was working on in Wuhan months before the world heard of the novel coronavirus, Covid-19.
Interestingly, the only response to Covid infection was – and still is – “vaccination.” All other treatments, some very effective, have been suppressed and discussion of them censored. Reputable scientists estimate that half a million American deaths can be blamed on failures to treat Covid with known anti-virals, immune boosters and supplements. Individual personnel within the NIH are allowed to earn royalties from numerous pharmaceuticals they helped to research, including the slickest liar of all, Dr. Anthony Fauci, reportedly the highest-paid employee in the federal swamp. Lying about Covid must have been the most lucrative scam he’s had. To really push the mass vaccination program that was part of a tawdry, essentially worldwide scheme, great fear had to be fomented, and locking down the country from most business activity fitted in perfectly with that goal.
First, though, the “Friends of Fauci,” recognized scientists all, conspired to flood medical publications with false opinion papers that claimed, uniformly, that the origin of the ENGINEERED SARS-2 novel coronavirus came from some natural evolution that workers at a “wet market” in Wuhan city were exposed to. Real virologists, like Fauci, can identify the Furin cleavage site in the viral chain where other genes were added to the original SARS virus. Yet the papers went forth at Fauci’s direction to confuse politicians and divert attention from the financing of the exact research – begun in the U. S. and shifted to Wuhan – that made COVID-19 so infectious. Lies have consequences.
COVID killed a lot of people, although far fewer than statistics claim, and nowhere at a higher rate than in the United States! How could that possibly be? We certainly have a right to know.
In effect, the pandemic here was handled politically, not medically. Fauci and others inside the deep state, beholden to big Pharma, and PROFITING from them, advised federal and state governments to impose useless and actually harmful steps, locking down economic and social activities, ruining family economics and, worst of all, forcing protocols on hospitals that ignored known treatments and caused the deaths of thousands who could have survived. It seems criminal.
As the so-called “vaccines” were introduced, the lies became greater. The definition of “vaccine” had to be changed to include the weird chemicals that comprise mRNA shots. Pushing them as vaccines was and still is comforting to the average “emergency use” recipient, now pushed down to infants and children. Unfortunately, nRNA shots don’t prevent the disease, they don’t prevent infecting others, and they don’t instill normal immune response. Oh, and they don’t last long in their one effect: mitigating the “severity” of infection. As one gets into “booster shot” country, the effects dwindle to a month or two. The shots are utter failures as vaccines and immensely successful as money-transfer agents.
But, wait! There’s more!… or less. The shots are dangerous to humans! You’ve seen the ads, over and over, telling the trusting that COVID vaccine is “effective and safe.” Some mothers couldn’t wait for them to be available so that their kids could be protected from a disease that is of nearly ZERO threat to them! Zero as in NO THREAT! Why force an experimental drug known to damage children to the point that they are at greater risk from the injections than they are from the disease? I’ll tell you why: FEAR and two years’ of lies from our helpful government.
Other lies… well, let’s talk about IMMIGRATION. Anyone in this administration or Congressional Democrat who happens to get a question about the “control” of the border with Mexico, lies. No one stands out as telling the truth about this one issue.
President Biden is virtually never asked about the border – that’s left up to his press flacks: first Jen Psaki and now the incomparable Karinne Jean-Pierre. On August 29th reporter, Peter Doocy asked “KJP” why tennis star Novak Djokovic cannot enter the United States to play in a tennis tournament because he ‘s not “vaccinated” against Covid, but migrants can just walk into Texas and Arizona unvaccinated and are allowed to stay?
Jean-Pierre’s response was that just walking in was not how it works. When corrected of that notion she stated that “…it’s not like that you can’t just walk over and…” And so it goes in the great mendacity machine that is the Biden administration.
Prudence has asked before: Where do we turn when our own government lies to us?
We’re all psychologists. Humans could not work together, form societies or even families, if we could not “size up” one another and make relatively accurate judgments as to the attitudes and outlooks of those we need to live with. Like every other human skill, psychological survival and progress has attracted experts, often the death knell of progress in the field of interest. Beyond studying and learning about human psychology, psychologists have moved on to defining and even inventing forms of it. Today it is almost as though the professional in the psychology field had DISCOVERED psychology in humans and that they, psychologists, must be consulted about any and every aspect of it, lest mere humans hurt themselves and others by trying to comprehend it.
Life is animalistic without psychological abilities. Animal brains only barely exhibit any sense of meaning to the actions they take. Humans strive to avoid it. Part of the magic of human psychology is the ability to worship, and to perceive a spiritual existence that is the greatest sense of meaning possible. What does – or what will – what I’m doing, mean?
Generally, the actions of today are taken because of their meaning something in the future. We save today for security tomorrow; we court and marry today to produce a family of children tomorrow; we live honorably, creating friends and earning respect from others, so that we’ll have friends and friendship in our old age; we try to avoid poisoning our bodies and avoid danger and injuries because it means we can live longer. We even attempt to extend our meaning to others beyond the date of our death with inheritances and bequests and instructions. Unfortunately, we are descending into a process of talking ourselves out of our own humanity. Psychologists of various stripes have convinced many to deny who they are, and have convinced many others with influence over them, to help them in the process of denial. What for?
A large element of civilization has been and remains theater. It could be as simple as street actors and their ad-hoc creation of scenes, characters and stories, to the elaborate production of operas that remain popular over decades and centuries. Greek and Roman theater still teach us to look at life and meaning in “better” ways; Shakespeare, Marlow, Bacon and thousands of others from every culture, employed costume, staging, music, masks and pretense to teach cultural truths and lessons for living. Modern electronics make it possible for every individual – including children – to become a preferred pretense character, almost always on a Snap-Chat stage. It seems, unfortunately, that the “psychology community” talked itself into treating human theater, down to the individual level, as more valuable – more essential – than reality.
As one old Greek noted, “Virtue lies in Reason and Vice in rejection of Reason.” However, as psychologists are only too aware, or promoters of, Reason cannot be satisfactorily defined, especially from generation to generation. There seem to be thousands of permutations of reason, and as communications have advanced, so to speak, certain biases have become widely shared, affecting modern concepts of reason, which is not to say, Truth. Since the 1960’s and ‘70’s, feminism has become the overriding permutation of reason in the United States, and it has led to a society-bending twist of sexual roles and mores. Psychologists haven’t tried to stem this tide. Where “psychology” might add to understanding of various truths, instead it seems to adapt to and rationalize social trends.
Prudence can expect to be roundly chastised for the previous paragraph, and, probably, the next one.
Feminism has done more damage to American society than any other belief system besides slavery. Bit by bit – now chunk by chunk – it has feminized men and destroyed the majesty of motherhood. Simultaneous with the explosion in homosexuality, feminism has also led to hyper-sexualization of school-age children down to disturbing ages. As it has torn down the old morality it has failed to replace it with a new one. Where women used to “civilize” men, they now compete in an arena of irresponsible sexuality where everything is planned or avoidable based on the whims of women.
Women are now the drivers of the new para-psychology called transgenderism. And, rather than eliminating confusion about maleness or femaleness, it encompasses a host of “sexualities” that mainly women teachers and gay or other “non-binary” “teachers” feel compelled to dictate to, if not guide and groom, children at very young ages. Where are “the psychologists” on this strange twist of “education?” Sadly, they seem able to rationalize or even justify the trans-gender fad. If it didn’t do so much damage to the kids whose theatrical fantasies everyone is rushing to “confirm,” the psychologists might be forgiven.
MOST of transgenderism is theater. Children, some genuinely confused about sexuality, a very small fraction, and the rest who want to play at being the opposite sex, are pounced upon by agenda-driven teachers, psychologists, doctors and even hospitals(!), who are all in a hurry to “confirm” trans-gender fantasies. Confirmation, unfortunately, consists of largely irreversible hormone injections and blockers, and even surgeries to remove perfectly healthy organs. The children are permanently changed and their developments confused chemically. The greatest effect? Sterilization. Not many teenagers and damned few adults can conceive of what full medical transfiguration means as time goes by. Most come to realize that they have attempted something that is impossible in the majority of cases, and that leaves them neither male or female. There is more at stake than pronouns.
Yet, some dysphoria is real – the people who transition to another way of living are still real people who deserve as much respect as anyone else. Heterosexual people are largely unable to accept trans-gender people at “face” value. Reactions vary over a short spectrum, from disbelief to disgust. Normal people have a duty to learn respect for those who have found the only way to deal with their relatively rare dysphoria is transition. Let the rest of us count our blessings.
This doesn’t excuse the agenda-driven recruitment of children to a belief in gender-fluidity. Parents know that childhood whims and fantasies usually fade away or are outgrown by maturity in nearly all cases. To pounce on these susceptible kids, especially for teachers, is criminal. For administrators and political / civic leaders to make it ILLEGAL to prevent gender-predation shall remain a stain on the conscience of the nation. Shame on us and kudos to those leaders wise enough to resist this weird aberration in human purpose.
Those who are committed to the “trans” state of being and living also need to recognize that their own, understandably very deep biases toward “non-binary” sexuality, bends their views to find trans potential atop almost every pair of legs. Bigots on both sides need to stifle their angers and misunderstandings. Professional, expert psychologists and psychiatrists ought to be guiding the confused toward a path that is constructive for society and civilization. Unfortunately, they have agreed among their professional, expert-laden Societies, to avoid moral judgement and even counsel patients to dissociate themselves from religious codes. Indeed, such counseling tends to affirm those ideas that comfort the patient, rather than disturb him or her.
In other words, psychology can affirm one’s deepest beliefs, which is not to say truth. Unfortunately, sometimes beliefs are just wrong and counter-productive or damaging to society. They can interfere with forming positive bonds with others, with family members, or with others who would be good for the individual. Psychology has drifted too close to chemical solutions for too many conditions/reactions; they also tend to counsel for far too long, with patients dependent upon their therapists to maintain a new normalcy.
As Americans ponder the decline of trust in the institutions that ought to defend successful traditions and uphold the greatest strength of U. S. culture, one of those has been medicine, including mental health medicine. The professionals in that society have always been people of sense, ready willing and able to advise patients toward the healthiest, most sensible habits and actions. This used to include psychologists and psychiatrists, but this has all changed. Why? How did industries – professions – of HONOR, become so sullied?
Politics and money, not synonymous, but often congruent. If politics were corrupted by only money we could survive and even thrive as the running battle against corruption played its parallel games. But politics has been corrupted by ideology, hatred and mendacity. The Covid pandemic exposed the degree of twist that has occurred. One political party routinely condemns half the voters in the country, not as those who see a different way to improve and strengthen America, but as a group that can’t be permitted to hold or even share power… a group that threatens the republic, that is racist, homophobic, transphobic and every other epithet that can be used on TV to denigrate another person. Then that same party does everything that their opponents are accused of doing, BY THEM. It is no longer politics, but managed hatred, and it has coopted the institutions of government, justice, education and medicine, among others. None of the professions that once held the nation together have been spared.
The various forms of artifice are all masks, covering the faces of evil. Millions of true patriots resist and believe in the majesty of the American way – most are Christians. They – we – are the conscience of America. A new professionalism and a new citizenship are all that can restore us… and a new / old spiritual understanding of why humanity is male and female, and how it can survive and grow stronger. Honestly.
The Green New Deal has become a means of theft: elites taking freedom and independence, and possibly life, itself, away from the middle and lower classes. “Oh! No!” you say, “Surely you are misinterpreting the existential threat of climate change and their intense efforts to save the planet.” Well, no, actually I’m trying to balance reality with what we’re being told.
Many hundreds of statements and declarations are made on a weekly, monthly, annual basis – certainly on every hot day, cold day, dry day or wet day, that “climate change” is wreaking havoc on the planet and on the poor and downtrodden, minorities and LGBTQ+ “communities” worst of all. It’s all the fault of you smug suburbanites and your SUVs spewing that awful carbon dioxide… and the cow farts you cause by eating burgers made from meat and not insects. Don’t forget your air conditioners and outdoor grills – all hastening our extinction.
This would be such a nice planet to live on if it weren’t for all you… well… people for goodness’ sakes. (Can’t say ‘God’s sake.’)
Actually, if it were not for the constant tilt of most media outlets, the condition of the earth and its climate could be discussed and better known by young and old, alike. We are just coming to the end of a very hot summer. There were drought conditions in many countries. We will soon be inundated with claims of the planet having a “fever” and “the earth is on fire,” and similar declarations. So far, we haven’t suffered a hurricane coming ashore to the United States; as soon as one does, we’ll be told there are more -and stronger – storms because of our driving “fossil-fueled cars” and resisting buying non-polluting “electric vehicles,” EV’s. If we have a severely snowy winter with lots of cold, cold days, they’ll all be our fault, too.
There is some supposed perfect average global temperature… one we like. It is impossible to define the “ideal” climate, the ideal temperature, the ideal amount of ice at the poles, the ideal amount of cloud-cover or precipitation… or the ideal anything else. What does seem easy to idealize is the right population the earth should hold and support, and it is a Hell of a lot smaller than the population we have, today. Various oligarchs, like Bill Gates and others, think the world is overpopulated by 5 BILLION people, or even more. It’s going to take substantial new rates of sterility and deaths to achieve the “ideal.” What an achievement that will be.
Around the planet ice is melting… from the poles (supposedly), Greenland, various glaciers and so forth. This causes terrible worries. Oddly, they’re more terrible for leftists in the West, than for conservatives. They don’t make a damned bit of difference to leftists in Russia, China, India and elsewhere, or to Islamists, who are happy with any number of earthlings as long as they’re all Muslims – the right kind of Muslims.
It’s rather comforting that the climate is changing, whether warming or cooling at any time: the climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years – maybe billions of years… as long as we’ve had an atmosphere. No one would want to be here on the day the climate STOPS changing. For most people, “climate change” translates as “global warming.” We can see videos of running water on Greenland and shrinking glaciers in the mountains. Definitely, it’s warming. Then we have a summer like 2022’s and we are convinced of the imminent danger of the seas rising and a hurricane toppling our houses. Look what happened to New Orleans, for Pete’s sake. Maybe if they’d all had electric cars in 2005, the people who wasted the federal moneys for strengthening the dikes around the ninth ward might have gone to jail.
It’s hard to predict the future, and that’s the only kind of predicting there is. There is a form of false, God-save-us-if-this-happens sort of prognosticating, though, that is employed stridently by “Climate Campaigners.” It’s always negative. People who worry about and inveigh about the climate, are certain that change means some form of doom. They never seem to make any predictions of benefit from “climate change.” It’s always an imminent disaster, and it’s always our fault, meaning that we have to make drastic changes to avert certain death in as few as 10 or 12 years.
The premise of prediction is history. Recorded history of what people have done, or which volcanoes blew up or geologic evidence of mile-thick ice sheets that created the Great Lakes and the like, as well as records of various past weather trends and climatological periods, provide a basis from which inferences are drawn and, in very grave tones, predictions are made about the future of climate and weather over the next hundred years or so. It’s all very scientific, except it’s impossible to replicate the conditions to see if the same effects take place, so climatologists are unable, actually, to apply the scientific method to historic evidence and add to the evidence of the first “experiment,” seeking correlation.
Atmospheric scientists have gained great knowledge and reasonable predictive power of weather deriving from worldwide patterns like El Niño, although little has been said about movements of the magnetic poles, for example, and the focus of charged particles changing cloud formation patterns. The availability of satellite data, global photography and thousands of measurements daily and hourly, have given meteorologists perhaps too much confidence in prediction, and this has seeped in to the self-esteem of climatologists, too.
Whether from ice cores or dendrochronology (tree rings), climatologists can paint what they feel is an accurate picture of what the climate has been for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Things become more sketchy when they try to make inferences as to WHY they were the way they were. Bias, or belief, can sway even the best scientists’ theories of cause and effect. It’s something “science” ostensibly guards against and works against no matter the line or field of inquiry. Replicating experiments and finding the same or similar results – and publishing those results for other scientists to review and try to replicate or prove wrong, is how science makes real progress towards understanding.
It is not possible to replicate the past; it’s not possible to mimic all the conditions, both on the earth and impacting the earth hundreds or thousands of years ago. But there is great pressure, whether personal or from the all-important funding sources (grants) for a direct correlation to be discerned… cause and effect. Why? Because the reason the study of the past is being funded is often because of beliefs about today’s climate and weather, and that there is a way that humans and their bold politicians can avoid the conditions of the past. A little humidity – if not humility – is called for.
Politicians and the scientists they fund, have an overriding belief that we humans can modify the climate to keep weather as pleasant as we like, the oceans at the depths they currently are, the glaciers as big as they are if not bigger, and polar bears in their favorite conditions, too. Underlying this presumption is a belief that we humans have caused changes in the climate to begin with. Otherwise, we are powerless to undo the damage it is believed we have done! So, to start with, let’s agree that humans HAVE altered the climate somewhat, and not just around cities.
Cities form “heat islands” with huge blocks of real and manufactured stone, steel and asphalt absorbing more sunlight than the natural environment they replaced. But huge, multi-square-mile farms also modify natural environments, also changing sunlight absorption, requiring and transpiring huge volumes of water – water that is artificially moved away from its natural location(s). Are either of these commonplace alterations of the natural environment changing climate? Somewhat, but how much? It is very hard to quantify or even describe. That is, we know the CAUSES we’re concerned about, but we cannot, despite many claims, actually pin down the EFFECTS of these two causes. Certainly there are some, but what should people be forced to stop doing in order to offset those effects? We don’t really know, but there is a strong political pressure to force people to stop doing something because of some politicians’ FEARS. Indeed, one of their biggest fears is of doing nothing or, worse, of failing to force other people to stop doing something.
The urge to do something and to force others to do something comes, deep down, from a belief that a wise-enough human, especially from the leftist persuasion, can control almost anything, including populations, countries and planets. To a great degree, these same authoritarians will automatically adopt any tool or method to control those who aren’t in agreement with them, especially people whose faith tends toward religious origins rather than government ones. Soon, the authoritarians commence to blaming those who don’t agree with their beliefs, for the problems they believe they, the ‘wise,’ are destined to solve. Any contrary data, facts or “science” non-leftists discover, are automatically denigrated and their proponents are labeled “deniers,” as an attempt to more firmly cement the immutable truth of what leftists believe. It becomes difficult to discuss or debate ideas in that environment.
Because CO2 is generated by so many human activities and machines, not least of which is electricity generation, and because climatologists have observed wide fluctuations in the apparent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over millennia from all those ice cores and tree rings, there has grown up a set of beliefs about the correlation of temperatures at different points in time and CO2. We can summarize this fear quite easily: More CO2 than the magical percentage is BAD; less CO2 than the magical percentage is GOOD. Sometimes the rise in CO2 concentration precedes a warming period, sometimes it follows, but there is definitely, we’re almost certain… in fact, we’re so close to certain that it’s time to pass laws that we think will reduce the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere so that the average temperature of the entire planet’s biosphere can be controlled.
Whether these temperature fluctuations are caused by carbon-dioxide or not is unproven and unprovable. But, it is definitely believed by many. Of course, CO2 is essential for life and good for vegetation in particular, from which our food derives: farms and crops and things. So we wouldn’t want to interfere too much, would we? How much is too much? It’s impossible to say, but less than we’re making now, we’re quite certain.
CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor are the primary “greenhouse gases.” They’re all natural. Many chlorinated and fluorinated gases that we manufacture also have the effect of “trapping” solar energy. Fortunately, they are much smaller fractions of the atmosphere, although not as small a fraction as the dreaded CO2. [See http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/ ]
It’s common to see descriptions of human contributions to total greenhouse gases based on what percent of our (American) contribution is CO2. This makes it look like CO2 is a gigantic problem and the U. S. contributes over 70% of it! Ye Gods! Stop breathing! On the other hand, it is very reassuring that over 70% of what we contribute is CO2 and not methane or manufactured gases. Methane is natural gas, basically, and the product of bacterial action on organic materials, like food we eat or grasses and grains that cattle, deer, antelope, bears and squirrels eat, among other living things. Those gases escape, both intentionally and accidentally. As far as we know, animal escapes are all accidental. Still, methane is a greenhouse gas, the concentration of which also should be reduced, according to the magical percentage theory of global management. This has led to calls to reduce cattle herds and, less publicized, to reduce human herds, too. Ye Gods, again!
Those who are deeply committed to the magical percentages of greenhouse gases theory, are equally committed to blaming their fellow humans for every weather event that is less than perfectly comfortable for everyone from the Amazon watershed to the arctic tundra. Everything is now our fault. It has become a great tool for forcing people to accept authoritarian government as it lovingly struggles to avert the imminent climate catastrophe. A “climate crisis” is declared repeatedly. Taxpayers and anyone who wants the United States to survive and prosper, should have justifiable concern about any use of “crisis” in relation to items of government interest. The designation is uniformly employed to justify borrowing from future generations to create politically advantageous spending, now. There’s a $31 TRILLION liability on our balance sheet that demonstrates the effectiveness of this spending strategy. Thus it is that “climate change” has become “climate crisis,” a political tool, and not just for the U. S. Climate is global, and through the World Economic Forum [See http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2022/04/16/where-the-globalists-struck-first/ ] it is politically valuable to globalists and other socialists. There is no reason to trust them.
The W.E.F. has determined that nitrogen-based chemicals, like most fertilizers, must be curtailed in order to save the planet. You can see the conflict: humans eat the products of fertilized crops. We like to eat meat, too, often simultaneously, and the animals that provide it also contribute to nitrogen chemicals resulting from bodily functions. It is what it is. The globalist solution? Less eating! Unfortunately, many governments pay attention to the blatherous emanations of the W.E.F., and adjust policies to fit. You can read of the effects of this nonsense in the Netherlands, where farmers are in serious protest, or in Sri Lanka where people are starving. Oddly, the same people who want to mandate the mRNA “vaccines” are they who want to limit food supplies to avoid climate change. Are the two efforts connected in purpose? Population reduction? Certainly, in terms of the net effects of the Covid-19 “vaccines,” population reduction appears to be the biggest net effect. The spike in non-Covid deaths among the healthiest demographic (ages 25 to 64) in the U. S., Canada and the U. K., is continuing. The victims are vaccinated against Covid.
It seems intensely Prudent to be intensely skeptical of the unsubstantiated claims of Climate believers.
We should consider the benefits of warming and the ancillary costs of attempting “carbon neutral” or, worse, “zero carbon” by any date-certain. All the public statements about “climate change” fit under one heading: “The sky is falling!!” Note the dual exclamation points! Once the rabid claims are sorted out – and the overblown statistics corrected-for – the best projection for the extent of warming is 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by year 2100. What are the upsides?
One is longer growing seasons for the crops that sustain the world’s population. This can also translate to requiring less fertilization and more fallow periods for fields, enabling natural processes to enrich the soil between crops. There will be more arable land, now covered by ice. Some may think this is a tragedy, but those who live near the ice are glad to see it go. Earth’s current weather patterns will change. This may mean more rain in lots of areas. Deserts that have evidence of past wet periods might return to that condition, improving opportunities for many peoples to feed themselves and spend less time on subsistence, leaving more time to develop their societies and, perhaps, correct their crappy politics and improve millions of people’s lives and futures.
Less energy will be expended heating homes and other buildings; less fuel expended clearing snow. Meanwhile, should we manage to avoid or stifle the warlike designs of globalists and Communists, the invention and innovation of free, well-nourished people will be making at least as much progress in engineering and science as we’ve made in the past 80 years. Our economies will cost less in energy density, transportation will be logarithmically more efficient. People who are bound by ideologies that condemn half the population, and who are willing to twist “science” for political advantage, cannot conceive of humans creating solutions to the problems that serve one political ideology today: leftist authoritarianism.
In short, there are more reasons to hope for the future than to fear it. If we have the wisdom to restore freedom as our flame of purpose, there is nothing to fear. Biden and his ilk will be gone. Education will be dramatically decentralized and made honest and non-ideological. Freedom, Hope and Genuine Progress: bring it on!
It is certainly obscure, even mysterious, why a wealthy oligarch like George Soros would expend his fortune on the election of socialist, soft-on-crime District and States’ Attorneys. He has had an outsized impact on not only crime rates and, automatically, the victims of criminal acts, but also on the reduction in trust of government, police and justice, itself. Still, there must be a plan.
It doesn’t seem that Soros’ purpose stems from a love of crime or even any particular sympathy for the weak-minded dopes who commit crimes. He doesn’t appear to be an advocate for all things anti-White or pro-Black. But, there must be a plan and, considering his actions Prudently, the shape of the plan can be discerned. It is quite simple.
Soros is a socialist – a virulent one. He doesn’t seem to trust Communists, which is a mark of intelligence, but, like most political socialists, believes that socialism can be controlled and manipulated to fit the goals of oligarchs and one-worlders. By employing a process that breaks down civil order and public safety, Soros makes clear his contempt for the “proletariat,” which is most of us. He has always seemed offended, as it were, by the Constitutional limits that underpin the United States, the belief in “unalienable rights” that they guarantee, and, even more, the basically Christian love of freedom and personal sovereignty. Soros hates the power and influence of the United States of America, and of Americans.
So, it seems clear that the purpose of destroying cities through increasing crime and lack of trust in authority, is designed to force Americans to accept authoritarian forms of government… so as to “clean up” the crime, drug, homelessness and other problems that make normal citizens unsafe. It’s simple, really, and it won’t take long. There is already a significant political party/movement that is pushing for exactly the solutions Soros wants: Democrats. Their experience in promoting and excusing multi-city rioting and destruction, weakening of police departments and removal of the only populist president in our lifetimes, in 2020, and the ability to control almost everyone, including stripping many of their “unalienable rights” by building up the Covid-19 scare of 2020 – 2021 and beyond, encourages Democrats to attack the Constitution directly. They, and Soros, have won some victories.
Are any students, anywhere in America, learning why what Soros has been doing with his money is evil and anti-American? By the same token, are any learning about the Constitution, itself?
The Biden “administration” has done everything it could in 19 months to destroy the trajectory of the U. S. economy, and, possibly, U. S. permanence. Above all, everyone is either helped or hurt by the big “bugaboo,” inflation. Economists, pundits, commenters and news-readers galore, all have wise-sounding opinions, yet no one seems to know what inflation IS!
It seems Prudent to assume that some of them do, but the average person listening to any such is not going to find it out. To a mouth, all say in so many, many words, that “inflation” is prices increasing. Well, no it isn’t. Inflation is inflation of the money “supply.” And that isn’t even accurate; it’s inflation of available cash OR CAPITAL that is “liquid,” or lendable. Capitalism and “inflation” go hand-in-hand to create prosperity for most people.
“Wait just a minute,” you’re thinking, “Inflation makes prices go up, and that’s bad, so it’s not helping MY prosperity.” Actually, it has helped it – look at the riches and bounty we enjoy. It’s a two-edged sword… like fire. It can cook our food, keep us warm, run our engines or… burn the house down. The key is keeping inflation where it runs the engine without burning down the house. So, where does this wonderful inflation come from?
The simple answer is debt. Our economy – even your personal economy – operates on a “futures” basis. If you own your home you probably have a mortgage on it, which is a long-term debt, well into the future. One of the quirks in our economy is that banks can legally loan out more “money” than they actually have on deposit. It’s called “fractional reserve,” and it is about 14%. In other words, among all the stored “savings” deposits and “performing loans” and temporary deposits, the “Bank” has an average number of dollars “in reserve,” at any given time. If it amounts to a million dollars, our laws allow the bank to lend out up to $7 Million, round numbers, of which 6/7ths is, fundamentally, air. So long as the honesty and ability to repay of most borrowers are intact, this is a safe system and the recipient of the check for the house you bought, accepts the dollars that were created to write it, as well as if he saw them peeled from a big fat roll of $100-dollar bills.
If the seller of the house also dealt with the same bank, his or her new deposit of, say, $400 thousand will, for a while, increase the average “reserve” the bank can lend seven times as much of.
Anyway, you commit to paying your mortgage for 20 or 30 years because the pain of losing your home is worse than the pain of making the payments. Besides, you have a job, you’re productive, you’re helping to create profits somewhere – productive surplus, if you will. It is reasonable that you will keep your promise to pay. You have made your work valuable enough to produce some “productive surplus” for your own family.
Try to imagine where the construction industry and millions of jobs would be if there were no such thing as mortgages or construction loans. But, if you’re worried about inflation, look at what you just did: you caused the inflation of the money supply by about $340,000! Depending on the “velocity” of that money (through the economy), possibly even more than that. But! It’s OK. You’re going to pay it down – or “back” – to the bank. Owning that house will cause you to buy a bunch of other stuff that increases production (let’s hope, inside the U. S.), as well as future repairs and upgrades, and it will enable you to raise your children to become productive, too.
Transactions like these happen thousands of times a day, whether for homes, or cars, or work vehicles, trailer trucks and on and on. Every loan creates some inflation, but not more than the “economy” will absorb, or, we might say, not more than the economy needs.
In the process of economic activity, wages, sales and so forth, governments collect taxes. That is, BECAUSE THERE IS PRODUCTIVE SURPLUS in our economic activity, “we” can afford to pay taxes for those services and public works that individuals cannot provide for themselves. Among these are public school facilities, police departments, fire departments, all the bureaucrats who are there to help US, the military, highway and roadway constructions, sewage treatment, water works and sewers, themselves. All that stuff is paid for from productive surplus. If kept in a rough balance, it all works together amazingly well as more people become productive and relatively financially independent, and benefiting in safety and economy from our shared public works.
How does it get out of balance? Put most simply, if the money supply grows with no commensurate increase in production or productivity. Take the example we’ve experienced recently where governments, based on perceived, raw, political advantage, decree that the “minimum wage” shall be $15.00 per hour. A kid stuck at the fry station in a McDonald’s, making French fries for as many customers as desire some, gets a sudden, say, 20% pay increase. He or she cannot fry more potatoes than before the raise, there are only so many orders for fries in a given day. The added pay does not enable the fry-kid to encourage more people to buy fries than they used to buy before the change in pay. Do you think the individual cost of an order of fries is going up? Of course. Or, is it possible that customers might wait a little longer to get their fries – and their whole orders, when it’s busier? Perhaps the restaurant owner can’t afford to put two kids at the fry station in busy periods, now that the pay has increased arbitrarily. The customer pays – or suffers – for this arbitrary work rule.
So, French fries go up in price, but is that “inflation?” Well, no, obviously. It’s an imposed change to the “CGS,” or Cost of Goods Sold. How would inflation cause the price of French fries to go up?
Suppose that in a certain marketplace: your town, for example, there are both a lot of disposable income – free cash, as it were – and a limited supply of frozen French fries. Potatoes are neither grown nor processed locally; they are transported some distance to the restaurants that want them in your town. People in your town are in the habit of ordering fries with their burgers and sub sandwiches and business in fries is brisk.
Because the supply of spendable cash has been inflated (increased), people who might have held off adding fries to their sandwich orders, have started to order them more frequently, yet the total volume of fries coming from the processors can’t increase for quite a while, as the extra cash in everyone’s pocket makes it possible to afford the fries in other towns, as well, and the price of fries appears to be a bargain where they used to be a bit of a luxury.
Restaurants are finding that they’re “selling out” of fries and seeing customers go to another restaurant that still has some. The owners get on the phone to order more fries but there aren’t any extra to be had. Very quickly busier restaurants will offer a premium price to the distributor to get an extra case of frozen fries every day. Realizing the nature of the increased demand, the distributor makes a deal with a potato processor who guarantees additional frozen fries, but at a higher wholesale price, too.
Pretty soon, the French fry supply problem is solved and people in your town can obtain all the fries they want, although each order costs a little more. Lo, and Behold! Inflation of the money supply changed demand patterns in the French fry marketplace. This example is too simple, but also real. During the engineered Covid crisis, the federal government wrote checks to millions of people that it/they, the federal, state and municipal governments had thrown out of work… billions and billions of dollars’ worth, but they were from accounts that had no actual – although highly hoped-for-future – money in them! The checks were written from AIR. Worse, they were doled out without regard to increasing productivity or other economic growth. No new crops were planted, tended or harvested; no new mines were opened and their valuable minerals retrieved; no new inventions were spurred causing new manufacturing to commence. But people accepted the ‘air-checks’ and spent them like money. The money supply increased by over a Trillion Dollars while the supply of goods to be purchased actually went DOWN!
Prices started to go up until states started to re-open their businesses and let people go back to work. The economy was roaring back when Biden was shoveled into office. He promptly signed another Trillion-dollar “Covid Relief” bill that was no longer needed, indeed it extended payments to not work, and inflation really started shooting up. The money supply – more air, but who’s counting – was now completely untethered from productivity, production or quantities of goods for sale. In addition, there was an even larger incentive to not work. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) started to take off in a serious way.
Because of “petro-dollars,” a sweetheart deal we made with Saudi Arabia (and, therefore, OPEC) when Nixon closed the gold window in the early ‘70’s, our federal spenders have developed a habit of calling everything a “crisis.” It doesn’t have to be a war, a disaster, a plague… just a problem – like getting re-elected. And, since there is (almost always) a terrible crisis, they can justify borrowing to resolve it. So, they spend about one-third or more, MORE than the real money tax receipts that the federal government collects each year. That missing third or 40% or so must be borrowed, largely adding to the “national debt.”
Now, if the extra federal spending were creating real wealth, which is what real investment does, the loans would steadily be repaid by the productive surplus the investments made possible. Another way of saying it is that the DEBT would be DESTROYED. That’s a good cycle: ideas vetted, loans obtained, practices, processes or new resources are implemented or obtained,* and the new productive surplus can be applied, in part, to “retire” the loan while net societal – or National – wealth increases. Living standards improve and the repaid capital (the loan) becomes available for other real investments.
This neat system collapses when non-productive or ANTI-productive effects of the loan (deficit spending, it’s called) are mandated by law. Most commonly, it collapses because the government borrows money to PAY FOR CURRENT EXPENSES, like welfare, interest on older loans, increasing the numbers of people employed in non-productive pursuits, and so forth. A good example of hiring more people to be non-productive is part of the recently passed “Prosperity Reduction Act,” or, as it is officially mis-labeled, “The Inflation Reduction Act.” Inside of this dishonest legislation is a provision to hire 87,000 more IRS agents, who will harass and impoverish productive people (tax-payers they are called) with absolutely no increase in productive surplus for anyone. Oh, there’ll be some fat paychecks, but the net wealth of our economy will decline.
The extra payroll dollars (among others in the bill) will inflate the money supply, however, and prices will move upward again as more cash chases fewer goods.
There are $600+Billion other dollars in the “bill” that also don’t represent any new production, productivity or wealth… they just lower the value of all the dollars floating around or in your wallet and retirement accounts. Thanks, Brandon.
*Where are new resources “obtained?” Well, there are only so many sources of new wealth that can add to an economy and total wealth of a nation. The first is agriculture. The elements of a crop of wheat or corn or soybeans or potatoes, are relatively inexpensive. We count on God to provide the soil, the rain and sunlight… even the seeds, although humans have figured out how to augment everything but sunlight, and how to till the soil and harvest the crops with automated machinery, which has reduced the cost of labor in food production, as well. Barring weather disasters and political interference, agriculture creates new wealth with every crop-cycle. Many inventions and new mechanizations have been developed in response to the need for better food production as population has grown.
Coincident with expanding agriculture are various forms of mining, whether for coal, metals, oil, gypsum, quartz and dozens of other riches the earth provides. From them have come thousands… no, Millions of products and inventions and improvements to standards of living, not least of which are pharmaceuticals and computer chips. Virtually every one of these bits of progress and improvement has required some “financing,” or, as better known, debt. Little by little every step has also “inflated” the money supply, but in rough equivalence to the new economic activity each has spurred. A lot of that activity has been in the form of “fixed” assets, like buildings, roads, bridges and so forth. At their creation, “fixed” expenditures DEFLATE the money supply, while enabling long-term economic benefit for lots of other activities, comforts or safety.
Somebody is going to paint those buildings. We’re still driving across bridges that were built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.
Some companies, banks, agencies, treasuries and individuals are benefitted very nicely by inflation, primarily the federal government. They get to spend the money first. Debts and other invoices the federal government owes are paid off with “cheaper” dollars. Increased payrolls result in increased tax receipts. Favored industries obtain contracts and payments to carry out policies incorporated in the inflationary legislation. Millions of votes are purchased as loans are forgiven and exorbitant expenses incurred and paid off. So, some benefit immediately and don’t begrudge deficit spending. Others, tax-payers, not so much.
The actual net result is a reduction in both national and individual wealth for MOST people. The few favored in the legislation get an artificial boost of income. It’s all very unfair and sold to the American people as a universal “good.” But, what does it have to do with “petro-dollars?”
Petro-dollars refers to our agreement with OPEC that oil would be traded only for dollars. Every nation, basically, would need to always have some dollars on deposit – some even made the U. S. dollar a “reserve” currency – so that when they needed to buy oil they could. If they sold oil, they accepted having billions of U. S. dollars on deposit. Dollars could be exchanged for any other currency an “oil” nation needed to buy products from anyone. Still, a global acceptance of dollars gave a golden “carte blanche” to ignorant congresspeople to borrow without any practical limit. All they need is a “crisis.”
At the same time that President Biden has ruined relations with Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC, and attacked fossil-fuels in the United States, multiple countries like Russia, China, Brazil and Iran, are making moves to eliminate the dollar as the currency of trade in oil. When they succeed – WHEN they succeed – countries will start dumping dollars. They won’t have the impetus to buy stuff from the U. S. in order to use up the dollars they have had to hold. Currency markets will turn upside down.
We will experience price increases that are unimaginable. All the goods and goodies that we import now, will have to be paid for with more valuable currencies than U. S. dollars. Exchange rates are going to punish the dollar when that day comes. All the dollars that have been created in other countries and banks have been inflating the same “money supply” we talked about earlier. Every dollar BILL is, in fact, a bill that must be paid with something valuable, not merely with more “Federal Reserve Notes.” The mendacious debt that Congresses and administrations have racked up to the tune of almost $31 TRILLION, will complete its cycle of inflation, as well, while much of the trading world rejects payments in dollars, preferring gold, rubles, rials, or, most likely, yuan. We have no concept of and no political ability to balance our books and bring the number of dollars floating around into alignment with some form of productive output from our economy. Prices, for everything, will shoot up.
We can see the World Economic Forum, a group of self-selected control freaks by which real governments – including our own – are being influenced, is spreading the organic fertilizer of “nitrogen pollution,” since carbon-dioxide hasn’t scared enough people. To limit “nitrogen” requires, in their view, reducing crop yields (by refraining from using chemical fertilizers) and going “organic.” There is an agenda that is far removed from “climate” at work here. What will we do when hyper-inflation is chasing reduced supplies of food around the world? Or, when Chinese- and Bill Gates-owned land is held out from cultivation in our own country? We need miss only ONE growing season to be faced with famine, which is very unpleasant, even here.
Looking at the effects of the “green” movement and the recent pandemic-inspired tyranny, and the so-called vaccines that resulted, the main effects, cumulatively, have been death and sterilization. Sounds like population reduction, if one were being Prudent. Lo, and behold! Bill Gates and the people he hob-nobs with agree that there are too many people on Earth, by a factor of two-thirds or more! Let’s “vaccinate” every person on the planet. Inflation won’t be a problem, then.
