HOW COVID WRECKED SCIENCE AND STOMPED LIBERTY
We remember four years ago like it was yesterday. We remember how the COVID curtain came down, how the lockdowns were ordered, how the masking and the mandates were enforced, how our speech was curtailed, how our liberties were usurped. We remember how the lab-leaked China virus took control of our lives. And we wonder: Did we really learn our lessons?
Oh, sure, there's a general consensus that lockdowns are a bad idea and that vaccine mandates are unethical. But when the next pandemic comes around, will science once again give way to hysteria? Will Liberty take a backseat to tyranny?
One of the most important columns we've ever written, sadly, wasn't among our most well-read pieces. It was published on October 8, 2020, and it covered Donald Trump's brief battle with COVID. We remember the message he tweeted as he left Walter Reed Medical Center: "Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life." He was onto something.
THAT PESKY FIRST AMENDMENT
In 2001, Barack Obama said something interesting about the Constitution. It was, he said, “a charter of negative liberties” setting out what the government cannot do. That’s a very peculiar formulation because, rather than seeing the Constitution from the people’s viewpoint as a leash on tyranny, he saw it from the government’s viewpoint as an irritating restraint on its power. Today, when the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a pivotal free speech case arising from the government’s pressure on social media during COVID, Ketanji Brown Jackson made the same point, only more explicitly. These people really hate that you have the right to talk back.
WHAT A REAL CANNIBAL LOOKS LIKE
On the remote north side of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu, there lives a cannibal tribe called the Big Nambas. The men wear a penis gourd wrapped in pandamus fibers, and eat “man long pig,” cooked human enemies. You have to trek over mountains of thick jungle to reach them. When I was able to years ago, there were a few men who continued the practice. This gentleman is one of them. I was in no danger as they were very kind and gracious to me.
That wasn’t the case a century ago when the first explorers, Martin & Osa Johnson, reached them. Their 1918 film, “Cannibals of the South Seas,” made the Johnsons famous, and you can see it on YouTube. Today they are far more benign. It is an extraordinary experience to meet a culture of fearsome reputation and realize they are people like you and me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #103 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
TRUMP THREATENS NUCLEAR WAR, STATING ‘THIS GUAC IS THE B*MB!’
U.S. — After former President Trump declared his freshly-made guacamole "the bomb", media outlets across the nation announced that Trump had threatened to drop a nuclear bomb if he were to lose the election.
"This is a clear call to civil war," cried MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough as video played of Trump eating chips. "You heard the words 'the bomb' from his very own lips. Is there nothing this madman won't do?"
Several media outlets reported that Trump's threat of nuclear war came immediately on the heels of Trump vowing to demolish democracy when he claimed he was "about to demolish" some tortilla chips. "We are sickened to hear such vile threats from former President Trump," said Scarborough. "Watch as Trump openly says he's about to 'slice and dice' tomatoes. Slice and dice? Trump is literally saying he plans to cut every one of his opponents into tiny pieces with a knife. Horrific!"
According to sources, the comments came after Trump served up his world-famous guacamole during fajita night at Mar-a-Lago. The guacamole, a family recipe for generations, was made tableside by Trump himself and described as "absolute dynamite" in addition to many other violent and obviously pro-insurrection phrases.
At publishing time, MSNBC had reported that Trump also planned to burn Democrats alive after revealing that Trump described the fajitas as "sizzling." - Babylon Bee reporting
PROPHECY ONLY HELPS IF YOU HEED IT
Years before Covid, the scientist credited with eradicating smallpox warned against shutting down the world to combat an epidemic.
In 2006, ten years before his death at the age of 87, the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson laid out a plan for how public health officials should respond to a major influenza pandemic. It was published in a small journal that focused mainly on bioterrorism—and was quickly forgotten.
As it turns out, that paper, titled “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza,” was Henderson’s prescient bequest to the future. If we had followed his advice, our country—indeed, our world—could have avoided its disastrous response to Covid.
THE EXISTENTIAL SLAP
[The Existential Slap is what Dr. Nessa Coyle calls, “That moment “when a dying person first comprehends, on a gut level, that death is imminent. It changes everything. It is what Israel received on October 7, 2023, and America would be wise to wake up to that Slap, as well.
I beg your pardon for this graphic picture, but this is not a Hollywood shot. This is real. It happened. And it could happen here. **SLAP**]
On the morning of October 7, ordinary Israelis left their offices, closed their laptops, and abandoned their fields to pick up weapons, in many cases without waiting for instructions from the state or its army.
ELEPHANTS IN THE SAHARA
10,000 years ago, the Sahara was green, with lakes, rivers, and such an abundance of animals it was a hunting paradise for people who lived here. You’ll find their petroglyphs carved on to rock outcroppings like this that my son Jackson and I found on a Trans-Sahara Expedition in 2003.
The Milankovitch astronomical cycles that drive Earth’s climate produced a West African monsoon that greened the Sahara back then. When the cycles shifted ending the monsoon, the Sahara turned dry desert as it remains today. Political cycles that permitted a peaceful crossing of the world’s greatest desert have also shifted, making this too dangerous now.
A Trans-Sahara Expedition is one of the world’s great adventures. Hopefully, one will be possible again in the not-too-distant future. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #7 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY PEACEFUL PLACE IN IRELAND
St. Finnbarr’s Oratory, Gougane Barra, County Cork. St. Finnbarr (550-623) is the patron saint of the city of Cork, now Ireland’s second largest city, on the south coast of the Emerald Isle. He established this tiny church in the late 500s, and has been built and rebuilt on a small island on Lake Gougane, with the one you see finished some 150 years ago.
Gougane Barra is a remote valley distant from Cork, almost uninhabited, of legendary beauty. The oratory or chapel has been a holy place of summer pilgrimage for Christians for fifteen centuries, revered for its complete serenity and peacefulness. Rarely visited outside of summer due to its remoteness, you may have this holy place all to yourself. Here is where you come to rest and reinvigorate your soul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #218 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BEYOND THE PALE
[This Monday’s Archive is TTP’s celebration of St. Patrick’s Day with its “nutshell history” of Ireland, first written in 2006. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all TTPers!]
Ronald Reagan’s origins are even more humble than Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin.
His great-grandfather, Michael O’Regan, was born in a hut of mud and slats in farmland called Doolis near the village of Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, in 1829.
In June 1984, Ronald Reagan came to Ballyporeen as President of the United States. In his speech to the townspeople in the village square, he said, “I can’t think of a place on the planet I would rather claim as my roots more than Ballyporeen, County Tipperary.”
A friend of mine was there as a member of Reagan’s staff. After the speech, the President commented to him, “I really am proud to be from here.” With a wink, he explained: “You see, I’m from Beyond the Pale.”
BORDER CONFUSION
