In the recent lockdowns across various states and cities, numerous people were told their businesses and jobs were not essential and that they had to stop working, go home, and stay there. For the common good, of course. Stay safe. Stay home. Starve to death.

This immediately raises the question though: what constitutes an “essential” job? Since governors, mayors, and other assorted “officials” have assumed that they know the answer to that question, it seems that there really ought to be some method of determination, a criteria for selecting one occupation as essential and another as not. How is this done?

What is an “essential” business? What is an “essential” job? How is that determined? Who does the picking and choosing? What are the criteria? These questions ought to be answered out loud in public. Unfortunately, too many businesses have been shut down and too many people have lost their income because some “official” decided on his own that they were not essential.

Fact is, when you get right down to it, the only things essential and absolutely necessary to sustain life are food, water, and shelter. If any work is deemed “non-essential”, it should be that which gets in the way of people providing these necessary items for themselves and their own. In other words, the work of those who try to restrict the freedom of others. Specifically, government officials, bureaucrats, busybodies, snitches, and other stuffed shirts.

Fact is, when the only income a single mom can earn comes from her job as a barmaid, a waitress, or a hairdresser, then her job is essential. Who is the President, governor of the state she lives in, or Anthony Fauci to tell her otherwise?

As I said, food, water, shelter. That is all anyone needs to live. Everything else we can live without.

Not only hairdressers and tattoo artists, but auto mechanics, HVAC techs, gunsmiths, jewelry makers, realtors, politicians, lawyers, statisticians, police officers and the military, prostitutes, home remodelers (how I make my living, no one actually NEEDS a nicer house), grass cutters, landscapers, silver miners, steel workers, museum curators, musicians, saloon proprietors, laundromat operators, seamstresses, etc., etc., and many, many more. Together, all make up the economy and what an economy it is! It is possible to purchase anything you want or desire BECAUSE someone provides it. Anything you want or desire has value and anyone who sells that to you is providing value to the economy.

To say that if they go away then society loses nothing of value is the same as saying that every job outside of the absolute essentials has no value. The people who provide the “essentials” are the only ones who are doing anything of value. It follows then that, if anyone wants to provide “value” to the economy, then he or she needs to work in the food, water, or shelter industries. Everything else can just dry up and blow away.

What a boring, pitiful society that would be! It would probably revert back to a hunter-gatherer type in which our only concerns revolved around how to get enough food to eat today, finding a source of water to slake our immediate thirst, and bedding down in a “safe” space for the night. Not to mention that the number of people alive would drastically plummet until there were only a few able to subsist on the land.

How do you make your living? Are you one of the “essentials” or is your work “unnecessary”? Are you willing to live in a society which has nothing except the bare necessities? I am not. I am willing to bet you are not either.

Joe Biden has won and will be directing the American State as President for the next four years.

Well, maybe. We’ll know for sure in a little while after all the recounts, challenges, and court verdicts. Or maybe we will see the election decided in the House of Representatives which the Republicans will dominate, guaranteeing Trump the victory.

I don’t care one way or the other. This post isn’t about the outcome of the election, whether it was fair or fraudulent, whether Congress will determine the winner or the MSM will. Instead, I want to focus on the idea, quite prevalent in conservative circles, that the Corona Monster will fade from view now that Biden has been (theoretically, at least) proclaimed as the next king.

One question which must be answered is this. Did Biden and the Democrats promote the Covid-19 panic pandemic for the sake of wresting the presidency away from Donald Trump? Of course not! How could anyone be so crass as to even consider such a preposterous theory? Right, and I am not good at hiding my sarcasm either. What cannot be denied, however, is that the major news media, in every form, which has been trying to throw Trump under the bus for more than four years has also been the same media which has been pumping “Covid, Covid, Covid” into our consciousness non-stop, 24/7, for at least nine months. In fact, this same media has assiduously attempted to squelch any and all dissent from and opposition to the mainstream current of thought on the virus.

Which brings up the question again. Now that Biden has “won”, will the virus somehow magically fade away? There are those who think so, but I am not one of them. In fact, I think the opposite will happen and we will experience Act II. Second verse, same as the first, except louder and a whole lot worse.

I have my reasons, two of which are listed below.

First, for the State which always gains power and control through crises, but never gives them back when the crisis ends, this has been a good run. A very good run, indeed! The last nine or ten months have shown what happens to a world when irrational fear takes over and people are willing to do anything to eliminate the cause of that fear. The blind, unthinking, slavish reaction to the corona virus has been astounding and, to a logical mind, unbelievable. Except that we have seen it happen in real time to real people. Why would those who have gained mightily from the crisis give back anything to those from whom it was taken? There is only one answer: They wouldn’t. They won’t.

Second, and this may be more important, is that there is nothing to be gained by unilaterally announcing that the virus has been defeated because Biden “won”. Rather, there would be a lot to lose if something like that happened. Start with the pharmaceutical companies which would lose all that beautiful money if the “deadly pestilence” suddenly was declared manageable. Or on a more mundane level, imagine the shock and disillusionment if millions of people suddenly found out that they had been used and lied to for nearly a year just so that Trump could be ousted. (Forget the fact that they were used and lied to for much longer and in myriad other ways.) If they were told that corona was no longer a threat and the country thanked them for their “service” (loss of income, loss of job, loss of business, loss of trust, loss of relationship, loss of home, loss of dignity and self-respect, etc.), there would be a howl of outrage which would eclipse anything we have heard for a long time. The torches and pitchforks would come out. Bigly!

And politicians and medical “experts” would quail at the sight and sound of it.

Nawhhh! The virus, whether it is real or not, will continue to spread. It is in the interest of the powers-that-be to keep the momentum going. It is not going to stop. Instead, the whole scenario will be shifted into second gear and the accelerator will be floored.

Watch for this to occur if Biden wins. Watch for it to occur if Trump does. Watch for it. It’s a done deal.

There is something odd about this corona virus panic, er, pandemic that is intriguing. Consider the whole face mask situation.

We have been told (hectored, nagged, browbeaten) to wear face masks for months now to the point where it is not uncommon to see near-universal compliance. Widespread coverage, please pardon the pun. Yet, in the wearing of these masks, there is nothing like a concerted effort on the part of many to ensure that they are being worn “properly” or “effectively”.

How many times have you been out in public, surrounded by a sea of masks, but many of them are pulled down below the nose, supposedly to allow the wearer to breathe more easily. How many times do you see someone wearing the mask below their chin, which is just a completely useless application. Or they are constantly fiddling with the adjustment, touching the mask against all the “rules”, moving it up, down, or sideways, supposedly to make it fit better and, perhaps, allowing for easier breathing. Or maybe masks are “required” for entry, but a large percentage of the people inside simply ignore the signs and go about with bare faces and no one says anything to them about it.

These things (and more) tell me that the vast majority of people really don’t believe the propaganda that is being passed off as medical truth. If they did, they would follow the orders advice religiously, as if their lives depended on it, which they are constantly assured is the truth. Oh, there are true believers out there and I have some (small) respect for them even though I think they are deluded, but most people are probably just going along with the farce because it is easier and less complicated than standing up for what they know to be true.

Cloth or paper masks really don’t have any effect on the transmission of aerosolized corona viruses and will not prevent anyone from spreading the disease or contracting it. N95 masks which are individually fitted and tightly sealed might, but the average mask does not. Instead, this has become a charade, a masquerade, in which most of the participants know and realize that the game they are playing is false. Yet, they continue on, acting as if their role actually might contribute in some meaningful way to the overall success of the show.

Utter theater, with the curtain already lifting on Act II. Second verse, same as the first. Little bit louder and a whole lot worse.

Why? I can think of at least two reasons which apply here.

1. Peer pressure and public opinion. It is much easier to go with the flow than to go against the current. After all, if everyone is doing it, then who am I to say that it is wrong or ill-advised? And I really don’t want to incur the wrath of the mob onto my own head, so I’ll just become a white sheep in a herd of white sheep, minding my own business and not drawing attention to myself–like a black sheep would.
2. In the world of men, there are only three types: those who order, those who resist orders, and those who follow orders. The first two categories number just a few of the general population. The vast majority are made up of those who jump when someone tells them to. It is hard, perhaps impossible, for the average person to resist or disobey an order from a perceived authority, even when that person knows or suspects that the order is wrong. The compliance of the German people in the Nazi era is a good example of this.

If you give them a choice, the mass of people will always take the easiest path. This correlates with what Jesus Christ said about human nature. (Matthew 7:13-14)

“Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Considering the topic of this post, it would be well to point out the very next verse.

“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”

There are those who seek power to order. There are those who resist those who seek power to order. And then there are those who are taken in by the message of false prophets.

Time for a little introspection, perhaps?

Where do you draw the line between standing up for your beliefs and caving in to the dictates of someone else? At what point will you say, “Enough!” How far will you back up, hoping that you will not ever have to stand your ground and resist the demands that are being put on you?

This is the question that people have to answer. How far indeed?

If you give ground on one issue in order to avoid trouble, then you are more likely to give ground on another related issue, again, to avoid trouble. The problem is, that if you give up enough, sooner or later you will find that you have nothing left. Benjamin Franklin said it so well 265 years ago:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I might restate this, as others have, that those who try to purchase temporary safety at the expense of necessary liberty will eventually find that they have lost both liberty and safety. Such is the dilemma today concerning the furor over face masks to (supposedly) mitigate against the “dread pestilence” of Covid-19.

Allan Stevo has this to say about the progression of refusing to hold your ground. In an article on Lew Rockwell, he writes,

“Because if you will wear the face mask, then you will take the vaccine. If you will wear the face mask, you will believe the election results. If you will wear the face mask, you will accept the lockdown. If you will wear the face mask, you will let your mother die alone. If you will wear the face mask, you will let your son be buried with no funeral. If you will wear the face mask, when historians one day call it necessary and normal, you will agree. If you will wear the face mask, then 2020 will be tolerable to you, and you will learn to adapt to the worst in humanity, rather than to demand the best.”

“When you wear the face mask, you tell the world that you are someone who will not identify his boundaries, communicate his boundaries, or defend his boundaries. You are instead someone with flexible boundaries, waiting for the right confidence man to walk all over you.”

Where is your line in the sand? At what point do you refuse to back up any further, regardless of the consequences? I am still sorting this out for myself on many fronts, but of one thing I am sure–if I am ordered to wear a mask by some government agent or agency under pain of punishment, then I will tell them to do their worst. If the governor of Montana decides to issue an edict requiring that everyone wear a face mask, then I will defy him on the constitutional grounds that he does not have that authority.

Greg Gianforte, take note! I will not comply. My face is my face and no one will tell me to cover it up.

Without getting into the “science” (sarcasm intended), it should be noted that the corona virus is many times smaller than even the smallest opening within the weave of the mask. In addition, the masks usually fit loosely around the face allowing airflow around them, thus destroying any argument that they effectively stop the entry or exit of the virus from the body. Nevertheless, people still demand that they be worn, not only personally, but by everyone in the mistaken belief that safety can be achieved so long as participation is universal.

Science be damned. It is the belief which is crucial and in this, Covid-19 has become equal to a religion. A cult religion, if you will, which rational, clear-thinking persons should reject out of hand as preposterous.

This is not substantially any different than the belief that wearing tin foil wrapped around your head will shield you from radiation or the reading of your mind by nefarious governments. There are numerous people around the world who subscribe to this, yet they are usually seen as delusional and the whole theory is generally dismissed as “crack-pot”.

Now, it might be claimed that the “science” is valid, since it can be verified that metal shielding can and does stop or limit the transmission of radiation. Well, yes, but then anything can be verified if you believe strongly enough and you are willing to manipulate the data to prove your point. However, the premise of the argument is not based on science, but fear, and the scientific data is used only to corroborate what is already believed to be true. The people who wear tin-foil hats are afraid of what might happen to them and, as a consequence, are not able to experience life as it is meant to be lived–freely and courageously, no matter the circumstances.

Ditto with the face masks. There is no use in arguing with someone about the “science” or effectiveness of covering one’s face. There is simply an irrational fear which people seek to overcome by resorting to the use of unreasonable claims. If it is true that a cloth handkerchief wrapped around one’s head will add some measure of defense against the Corona Monster, then it is also true that tin foil wrapped around one’s head will shield from the dangerous effects of radiation.

Neither of these have any real or substantial grounding in scientific fact. Both are heavily influenced by fear. Both ought to be discarded as public policy and seen for what they really are.

Some observations concerning past events, the recent election, and America’s future.

Disclaimer: I did not vote in 2020, which continues my tradition of not voting for the last 16 years. Further, I support no political party and have exactly no confidence or faith that government can solve anything at all and do it correctly. It only gets worse. Instead, as the old, old hymn goes:

“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus Christ, my righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”

“On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
 All other ground is sinking sand.”

For those who are willing to see it, America is sinking fast.

_______________________________________________

“My fellow Americans – I am honored and humbled by the trust the American people have placed in me and in Vice President-elect Harris. In the face of unprecedented obstacles, a record number of Americans voted. Proving once again, that democracy beats deep in the heart of America. With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal. We are the United States of America. And there’s nothing we can’t do, if we do it together.”

This is from a statement made by Joe Biden, the presumptive winner of the American presidential election. Notice the last line. Notice the assertion that unity of purpose in anything means success at whatever we attempt. Compare this attitude with that of the story of a civilization long lost in the dust of antiquity and mythology–the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11. Verse 6 is the link between then and now.

“And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.”

Almost literally word for word. “There’s nothing we can’t do.” “There’s nothing they won’t be able to do.”

Now, some will argue that the Babel story is simply an attempt to explain how languages came to be differentiated, which may be true. That is not my point. Does this “myth” have any meaning at all as a lesson in societal behavior. I find the similarities a little too close for comfort, but then, I’m quite skeptical about the ability of imperfect Man to build anything of permanence–whether physical, cultural, or spiritual.

Joe Biden’s statement sounds like this: “We can build a secure future for ourselves from which we cannot be dislodged. Let’s unite.” The Babel story sounds like this: “We can build a secure future for ourselves from which we cannot be dislodged. We are united.” From the historical narrative, it is plain that the Tower of Babel resulted in discord, division, and destruction of a culture. From the present-day perspective, our own society is mired in discord, division, and destruction. Is there any good reason for believing that we will somehow pull off a miracle and avoid being scattered like so much chaff before a windstorm?

If you have faith in the ability of Man and State to build a “more perfect union”, then, yes, you should be supporting the Biden/Harris ticket. It is certain they are going to make the effort. And everyone will participate, whether they want to or not. Whether this will succeed or not is debatable. I’m betting on the Lord’s ability to destroy Man’s creation faster and more thoroughly than it can be built.

Speaking of unity, in an earlier statement Biden said that, if elected President, he would write an Executive Order mandating a face mask for everyone nationwide. If that were to happen, then he can say that we’re all doing it together. Right! One of the hallmarks of socialism is that everyone is guaranteed equality. Under this protocol, everyone will be equally miserable in their faceless, anonymous, blank, masked world. How he would enforce such an order is another matter entirely.

We really can do anything at all, as long as we are all united. We can and will beat the Corona Monster, if we all cover our faces in a fearful, compliant manner. As long as we act in unison, we’re guaranteed the victory over this deadly pestilence which has wreaked such havoc, damage, and death on humanity to the tune of a 99.98% recovery rate of those who contract it. If we weed out those who resist and refuse to go along, then success is inevitable. We really can build a Garden of Eden–our Utopia.

I’ll wait for history to record what happens.

If there still remained any question about the insanity of the Corona Thing, the issue of abortion should resolve that. Our society has gone full-blown mad.

Since the rationale for the heavy-handed lockdown by governments everywhere has been touted and promoted as necessary for our “safety”, a person could be forgiven for thinking that the killing centers known as “abortion facilities” would also be shuttered. After all, how can anyone maintain a “social distance” of at least six feet and still invade the womb of a woman in order to destroy the unborn human being growing with that womb? Or conversely, how can the woman “social distance” if she allows very close, intimate, and physical contact with other persons? The obvious answer is that she can’t. They can’t. And yet, if you were to think that the procedure should be, at the very least, postponed until the virus runs its course, you would be mistaken.

In Texas, a federal judge in Texas with a long history of siding with abortion advocates ruled that Texas abortion centers can defy the governor’s order to stop non-essential medical procedures instead of helping coronavirus patients by conserving medical resources during the pandemic.

Alabama: Alabama stopped abortions under its non-essential order until April 13th but a judge ruled the state can’t infringe on the so-called “right” to abortion. The judge also ruled that killing babies is somehow “essential” if abortion centers think so. Alabama is appealing the decision.

Apparently, even though state governors have shut down virtually all “non-essential” commerce and activity, some judges have decided that abortion centers can be exempt from that. After all, if a woman wants to abort her unborn child, then to postpone that action is to create undue “hardship” on her, since it might cause complications. Complications to the woman, that is, it says nothing at all about the baby.

Let me get this straight. Our economy has been shut down. We have gone into, basically, a system of house arrest for much of the country and the world. All this is done preemptively because some people might die from the corona virus. Supposedly, the focus of the whole exercise is to save lives, regardless as to how much inconvenience it causes to those who have been subjected to it. We’re all in this together, right? Well, not exactly. The killers of unborn children have been given carte blanche to continue as usual.

Work in a restaurant, bar, hair salon, exercise gym, clothing store, gun shop, etc., to support your family? Stop! Right now!! The world needs your sacrifice in order to win this war!!! Work in an abortion facility? Carry on! Abortion is an “essential” part of life and it is necessary that a woman’s “rights” be preserved intact.

Question: If all our other “rights” can be abrogated so easily, then why does the “right” to an abortion have to be maintained? Answer: Because it fits an agenda. It doesn’t have to be logical or correct, but it does have to follow the narrative.

It would seem proper that, since the focus of all the recent events has been to save lives, then the most vulnerable among us would also be included. The fact that they are not simply underscores the depths of our depravity.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”–Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Actually, it really was the best of times for a while and many of us thought it would go on forever. When you’re dealing in economics and politics, though, nothing goes on forever and when the situation finally turned just a few months ago, it echoed Ernest Hemingway’s description of going bankrupt — “…gradually, then suddenly.”

We may have seen ‘the best of times’, but it is fairly certain that we have not yet begun to plumb the depths of ‘the worst of times’. It is quite possible, probable even, that we are only beginning to experience the consequences of decades of living large on a debt binge, fueled by annually growing government deficits, ever-increasing “fiscal stimulus” injected into the economy by the Federal Reserve, and the average person in hock up to his eyeballs as he tried to maintain his lifestyle of keeping up with the Joneses.

We have a rough and rocky road ahead of us. Our economy is not going to bounce back and revert to “normal” once the Coronavirus pandemic has run its course. The far larger threat is financial, economic, and political ruin on a truly massive scale. It would be easy, but not accurate, to blame the virus for what is happening. The truth is, however, that Corona only acted as the pin which pricked the Federal Reserve caused bubble. It may have been the catalyst which started the action, but the bubble had been building for a long, long time—searching for a pin and an opportune time to brush up against it.

Normal? If what we had before was normal, then we are going to experience something far worse—major recession and even Greater Depression, widespread unemployment, hyper-inflation, the death of the US dollar, authoritarian and autocratic rule, martial law, chaos, destruction, wars, and a loss of life on a scale we’ve not seen before. Is that abnormal? It’s going to become the new normal and we’re going to learn how to live with it and, potentially, to die from it. When it’s over, everything about us as a people, society, culture, country, and world will be different. Completely different.

I am confident, though, that somehow, someway, most of us will manage to survive and come out on the other side—poorer, stronger, and wiser. And I think it is safe to say that for the vast majority of people, the word ‘debt’ will once again become a four-letter word.

As it should.

I wrote this article on March 27, 2020. It was first published as a Letter to the Editor in the Bitterroot Star, Stevensville, MT.

On April 15, this article appeared in Zero Hedge, with the headline below blaring that:

US Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 30,000 After Doubling In A Week: Live Updates

I’m going to dissect that number further down, but first I want to draw attention to the way the CDC and “officialdom” have been inflating the number of deaths due to Covid-19.

Today, April 16, this article by David Brownstein was published in Lew Rockwell. In the article, Brownstein mentions that:

 “…the CDC stated that COVID can be a valid diagnosis of the death of someone whether there is positive testing or not for COVID. If the doctor suspects COVID is part of the reason why the patient died, COVID can and should be listed as the cause of death. That only serves to inflate the death numbers of COVID.” [Emphasis in the original.]

In other words, if someone dies and it can be proven that he had contracted the virus OR if the doctor merely suspected that infection, then it should be reported that Covid was relevant to his death, whether or not it actually had anything to do with his demise. A person might suffer a massive heart attack and die while the EMT team was trying to stabilize and resuscitate, but the coroner could (and probably should, according to CDC guidelines) list the cause of death as due to COVID. In other words, he died from contracting the virus.

This is fraudulent reporting on the part of the medical staff and it is being openly encouraged by the CDC in order to, as Brownstein says, “…inflate the death numbers of COVID.”

But, enough about that. Let’s jump back to the headline at the top of the page.

30, 000 deaths is a lot of people. There is no question about that. Taken by itself, this could be cause for alarm, however, when you interpret this in relation to the total number of people in the United States, it takes on a whole new meaning.

Consider that there are 340, 000, 000 people living in the US. If you learned in high school how to cancel zeros, you can see that the ratio of deaths to live people is 3 per 34, 000, or breaking it down into fractional form—1/11, 333. That is, for every eleven thousand, three hundred and thirty three (11, 333) people living in the US at this time, one (1) person has died from (or with) the corona virus.

Ask yourself. Is one person dying for every 11,333 living worth shutting the country down, tanking the economy, and destroying the lives of countless millions of people who depended on “essential” jobs to support themselves and their families?

No, I don’t think so either.

Spring is here, although the weather in my part of the world is still cold. I watched a small ‘blizzard’ outside my window on Saturday, which piled up at least an inch of snow on the ground with it blowing horizontally for much of that time. Some of it has not melted yet, but the weather “prophet” predicts warmer temperatures by the end of the week. Winter is over at last, although it may not be evident yet.

Good times, good times!

So it is with The Corona Thing. All of a sudden we’re seeing and hearing about the “light at the end of the tunnel”, with the attendant proclamations from on high that we might, just might, be able to unlock the economy and society a little bit, allowing some to go back to work. Some, meaning those whose life-sustaining jobs were deemed “not really essential at all” by the Powers-that-Be—all of whom have a vested interest in scaring the general public into a hysterical panic.

Suddenly, we’re seeing and hearing reports that this whole episode was blown completely out of proportion, fantastically exaggerated, and deliberately manipulated in order to justify locking down the entire world. Or maybe to act as a cover for what is happening in the financial arena, in which the FED has utterly lost control of the system and is desperately throwing trillions of dollars at the catastrophe in the vain hope that some of it will stick. Or maybe throwing trillions of dollars in order that the Cronies will be able to maximize their gains and wealth before the entire fiasco explodes in their faces. Take your pick.

As far as the corona-induced panic is concerned, I am reminded of the Christmas movie, The Grinch, which stars Jim Carrey. I watch it numerous times every year in December and always enjoy the show. In one scene the Grinch is careening down the mountain in his homemade sleigh with his dog, Max. At one point, he loses control of the sleigh and panics, screaming out something to the tune of, “I’m going to die. I’m going to be sick and then I’m going to die!” Nevertheless, just a few seconds later, he regains control and begins to calm down. After wiping his face, he makes this admission, “Whew, almost lost my cool there for a minute.”

Yes, indeed, you did, Mr. Grinch and so did all the other people who managed to go berserk in the midst of what can only be described as a ‘seemingly’ out-of-control situation in which many of us were certain we were going to die a horrible, untimely death. Now, all at once, we find ourselves still alive and, as a society, are going to have to admit that we just really lost it for a few months.

Crazy! It’s been crazy, but now it’s time for our “leaders” (politicians, experts, talking heads, financial manipulators, and corporate CEO’s) to get out of the way and let us get on with the task of picking up the pieces and starting to rebuild. However, that may not be as easy as it sounds, because this cycle of destruction is probably just beginning and, if so, still has a long way to go before it plays out.

Of all the movies I’ve ever seen, Fiddler on the Roof is my favorite, standing head-and-shoulders above everything else. I watch it over and over, often going to sleep and waking up only to shut it off at the very end. In one scene, Tevye’s daughter, Tzeitel and her new husband Motel are celebrating their wedding, during which the local police force shows up, wrecks the party, and terrorizes the celebrants, causing them all to scatter and flee. At the end of it, Tevye speaks to the only ones left, his immediate family, “Why are you standing around? Clean up!” Yet, at the end of the movie, all the Jews of Anatevka are forced to leave their homes and vacate the region with only three days warning.

The first part of the modern version of this has just played out. Our social celebration of the “greatest economy ever” has been destroyed, not by the corona virus pandemic, but by the heavy-handed manipulation of it and the accompanying collapse of society and self-control. There was continuous fear-mongering and hysteria, resulting in everything which was good and right about social relations being frayed and broken, broken to bits in the futile attempt to save ourselves from what will, in all likelihood, be proven to be an engineered crisis—engineered by those who stood to gain immensely by destroying the rest of us. Now all we can do is pick up the pieces and go on, suspecting that there is more to come without understanding the form it will take or what we can do to avoid it. We may, like Tevye, his family, and his friends, simply have to abandon everything we have lived and worked for and move on to something else in the hope that somewhere things will be different and better.