Dakota Beacon

Disclaimer:  The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of any other entity, including this publication.

The next time someone scolds you or threatens you because you are not wearing a mask or standing miles apart in a store aisle, ask him if he’s insane.  Because this is what it has become - insanity.  The worst health toll this virus has taken on humanity is not an attack on the lungs but an attack on people’s minds and it is not even limited to those who contract the virus itself.

This is not to say don’t take precautions, or to imply that the virus is not very dangerous to some people.  But far, far worse than the virus and its potential to harm us is the absolute havoc it is wreaking on people’s mental condition.  Just stop a minute and think about this.  Think about some of the most profound needs of the human soul - communion with each other and for many, their God, at times of bereavement.  And then think about that unique life moment when you must be with someone who has suffered great loss.  We all saw the video of the funeral parlor (in England, I believe) when a weeping widow’s two sons attempted to give her some comfort.  They, too, were suffering, of course.  They needed to be with their mom for her and for themselves, for each other.  The chairs in this hideous chamber were all conspicuously spaced far apart “due to COVID-19”.  The two men instinctively moved their chairs to be with the woman.  Along comes some funeral director and scolds them - in the middle of the funeral service! - for not observing “social distancing”.  There is nothing “social” about this.  The two sheep-like men obediently moved away, leaving the woman alone, to be alone themselves, at this moment of profound grief.  We are not allowed even to mourn in some of these observant places.   Now, to my thinking, the right instinct to follow for these two grown, strapping young men, would have been for each to take one for the director’s elbows and quietly but firmly usher him out of the premises and lock the door behind him.  That would have been my instinct.  After all, you don’t want to punch someone during a funeral service.  But instead, we see them retreat - their fear of stepping outside the lines overcoming their instinct to provide comfort to their mom.  I can tell you this - if my children ever show this much devotion to authority I will disown them.  This virus - or rather the official response to it - is attacking human nature itself.  If you doubt me on this just think of a couple of examples.  In California, Governor Newsom has ordered diners in restaurants to wear a mask at the table and take it down to insert a bite of food and then put it back up again.  This would ruin anyone’s meal and it can do nothing but spread any contamination - there is nothing worse for this than messing around handling your mask.  Add greasy or sticky fingers to this for even more fun possibilities.  And here is the last straw.  Student “guidance” emailed to students who tested “positive” and were under quarantine in the dorms at York University in England, were advised to “wait one minute” to leave the  building if they should hear the fire alarm -  in order to allow the “healthy” people to exit the burning building first and thus not contaminate them.  This tells us all we need to know about the condition of our culture and the status of the value of human life in our era.  And these are supposed to be the “good guys”, the “considerate” folks, the ones so solicitous for our public health.

Breitbart has a story today where the U.K. is experiencing horrific effects of medical neglect - a66% drop in chemotherapy, 89% drop in early cancer diagnosis (not that it matters much under the U.K.’s hellish healthcare system) and a 20% expected rise in cancer deaths in England alone.  “London GP Dr Renee Hoenderkamp wrote for the Daily Mail that in “bitter irony”, the government’s “heavy-handed” approach to coronavirus “supposedly designed to save lives appears to have achieved the exact opposite.  When the coronavirus outbreak began, and the Government talked of lockdown, I felt that tens of thousands of people could ultimately die, not from the disease itself, but the misguided response to it. That is exactly what seems to be happening,” she said.  And we are seeing this everywhere.

Just about a month ago we lost my uncle.  No one could be at the hospital to advocate for him “due to COVID-19”, so he was grossly neglected and over-medicated with barbiturates - they killed him in the hospital.  True, he was elderly.  But this man went for a daily bicycle ride every morning, did his own cooking, looked after his home and lived totally independently before a fall landed him in this rotten hospital that was under lockdown - no visitors.  No advocates.  He was simply euthanized without authorization - “due to COVID-19”.  He had tested “negative” for COVID, by the way.  Never had the virus.  We have seen over and over again, grandparents dying alone, without anyone there to hear any last words of love or comfort.  We are being psychologically tortured by this misguided, possibly even malevolent response.  It is far, far worse than the virus itself.

There is another insidious aspect to this - the expectation of the “authorities” that we will begin turning each other in.  We are seeing this all over the world.  The U.S. is no exception.  It is beginning to lead to mask vigilantes now.  People who take the “law” into their own hands and enforce these silly regulations.  We saw a video a few weeks ago of an American street scene in California.  A worker was taking his lunch break  outdoors, mind you - and eating a burrito.  It is well known among experts that when you eat a burrito you need to open your mouth and put part of the burrito in there.  To do this, experts tell us, you need to not be wearing a mask over said mouth.  This and the fact of being outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine did not prevent a do-gooder and her boyfriend from strolling by in their masks, she with a steaming paper cup of coffee, from assaulting the worker - first verbally and then, as a final flourish, by dousing him with scalding coffee.  She went on her way satisfied that she’d done her good deed for the day, having soaked the man’s clothing with her stinking coffee, burning him with it and wrecking his lunch and his day.  Good for her, right?  She was right, right?   More recently, back in Merry Old, a 60-year-old man was riding the bus with his 90-something mother.  She is hard of hearing and could not understand him through his mask.  He took it off to speak to her so she could hear him.  From behind comes the Lone Ranger of Mask Nazis.  He punched the man in the face.  The British police are politely asking this brave enforcer to call them and have a chat about it.  Is this what we want?  

The virus, in case you have not noticed, is being exploited as a political weapon.  Think back a year.  No - think back about eight months.  Back then would you have allowed someone to tell you not to go to church?  Or not to sing in church?  Or not to, let’s see . . . say the Lord’s Prayer in church?  What would you have thought back then of a New York leftist mayor or governor closing down synagogues?  I know we’ve heard this before, but if you don’t doubt their sincerity about this being for “public health”, explain their refusal to condemn “peaceful protests” (which all turn into riots when the flash mob arrives).  Just explain this please.  Oh - it’s because of our basic inalienable right to protest, is it?  We also have an inalienable right to attend a church or synagogue in America.  Why is one right “sacred” but not another?  Our free speech is shut down.  And here I am just referring to the one area of discussion of the virus.  Of course it is shut down everywhere else also, if we are talking about social media.  But if you try to retweet or post something which takes issue with “public policy” - whatever that is at a given moment (it changes radically on a dime from time to time) you are shut down.    Make no mistake - the cornavirus’s worst effect is on our freedom and our basic human rights.  Suddenly it has gained the upper hand over everything we have held dear.  

People who need to work are having to quit jobs because they cannot endure working while trying to breathe through masks.  Or because they are human beings with innate human dignity, will not diaper their faces.  And by the way, try one of the face shields that are out there as an alternative.  Or, if you lack that, just try looking at life through a fishbowl or from inside a bottle.  Actually, it may bring many to look at life just that way - through a bottle.  I would not blame them.  

As Joe Biden would say, “Here’s the deal.”  Masks do nothing to stop a virus.  First, physically they cannot stop it.  Perhaps they stop other things - maybe cold viruses or bacteria.  Of course, there is nothing healthier than re-breathing in bacteria you have just expelled and keeping it close to your nose and mouth.  But even if they could do this physically, how long do you want to fend off every germ and virus with a mask?  Do you want this to become a permanent feature of life?  Even worse - do you want the change in human behavior to become permanent?  The sooner we confront this reality - the fundamental change in human behavior from basically normal to robotic and sterile - the better.  It is time to stop wearing masks.  If you are in a very special circumstance go ahead and use it.  Use one if you, yourself, are sick with a cold or flu.   Better yet - stay at home when you are sick.  Stop “social distancing”.  Just stop it.  You can avoid crowds and crowded places if you wish, but don’t expect to go places and then everyone will part like the Red Sea for you.  Keep washing your hands.  It makes sense.  People had perhaps become lax about the common sense rules about hand-washing.  But stop the extreme behavior.  If you see someone not wearing a mask, don’t call the police or attempt to “deal” with him yourself.  Keep your own mouth shut.  If you feel threatened by someone not in a mask, move away from him.  Don’t engage him in a discussion - if you are serious about mask-wearing why on earth would you do that?  It’s stupid to stand there arguing with him if you genuinely fear his germs or the “virus”.  Obviously people who do this are not really concerned about catching anything - they simply want to exert some kind of control over other people.  We should not encourage this.  It gets out of hand very rapidly.

Like anything else, this virus is hard on older people or those with underlying health problems and those people should take as much precaution as possible to avoid contracting it.  But life must go on - without masks or “social distancing”.  We need to not allow ourselves to be used by the state as minders or snitches.  This is destroying our social fabric like no virus could.  

Yesterday Ezra Levant discussed a new and horrific extreme to which the government of Wales has gone.  For two weeks, everyone in Wales is under house arrest.  No kidding.  No visiting relatives or friends, no gatherings inside or outside of homes, regardless of number, no church or chapel, no work.  One must see no one in person other than those with whom he lives.  If you live alone, you will spend the next two weeks in solitary confinement.  Tell me:  is this healthy?  Is it “healthy” to close down our synagogues and churches in America?  Is it “healthy” even to keep people from their work or, shall we say, their pubs?  We have these places for a reason - we need them.  People have human needs and characteristics.  One of them is that unlike a spider, we have an innate social aspect.  We are deeply damaged and warped when we are prevented from behaving like human beings.  We’ve all seen stories about people who have been isolated unnaturally and how it has affected them.  It destroys them.  It will destroy us.  It will destroy you.  It will harm you far more than China’s virus.  Just look - like the Chinese themselves being literally welded into their tiny homes, now the Welsh are under a virtual imprisonment and under house arrest.  Google Melbourne’s policies if you want your hair on fire.  This is normally supposed to be used as punishment, not “public health”.  We are talking about well, healthy people here - not people who might in saner times be quarantined because they have a contagious disease like measles or mumps or smallpox.  This needs to stop and one more minute is too long to delay.   When the “authorities” tell the Welsh they dare not sing, we have found the end of the line.  It is the same as telling us not to leave a burning building.

For reasons - of their own perhaps - health “authorities” are tampering with the numbers.  Maybe their testing is not accurate.  Obviously if it is accurate it is not being reported truthfully - we had a shocking report of 100% “positive” in Florida following testing.  Some of this could be explained by noting that everyone has one element of what creates a “positive” reading.  These tests test nothing in some cases.  And skewing these numbers by ascribing deaths to this virus which are, in fact, due to other causes not only creates hysteria in the public but also destroys the accuracy of research into other causes of death, such as cancers, diabetes, tuberculosis and other non-coronavirus-caused deaths.  What will this do to our statistical research in the future?  If there is a sudden drop in deaths from lung cancer in 2020 because we are calling the killer “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” or one of its other aliases, we lose important research data for other diseases and conditions.  This is reckless and unscientific in the extreme.  

We are currently watching our very election process being up-ended over this, opening the floodgates to unprecedented election fraud.  Regular presidential debates - for what they’re worth with biased moderators - get cancelled in an election year.  We are expected to chew President Trump out for both surviving the virus and conquering it in style.  We are not supposed to believe in cures or therapies.  We are supposed to want to see this as fatal or nearly so.  We are not supposed to see a 74-year-old man up and holding massive high-energy political rallies days after leaving the hospital after a weekend stay.  But that would be denying the truth.  We do have the means of overcoming this.  We should not be living in fear.  We do need the truth.   Only if we have the truth can we defeat this.  Fear is undoing us.  It is destroying not only our economies but our basic human rights and nature.  We should remember the only right thing FDR said:  “The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself.”  In that, he was right.