A Journal of the Plague Year – The Courage to Do Nothing

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today I will be talking about the virus once again, the plague that threatens humanity in many ways. The virus is an invisible enemy upon which we wage war. This is day 42 of house arrest for the Castle family. Six full weeks we have suffered confinement with only a little time each day for a walk in the sunshine. The family daughter is making do while confined to a small island, unable to return until airlines start flying again. I have a friend who went to Argentina for a couple of weeks. That friend must now stay there until at least September 1. Authorities have banned flights both in and out until then.

Parallel universes

It is certainly a strange world that we live in today. In some ways it seems that we have different realities inside our heads or perhaps we live in parallel universes. Fifty years ago, I boarded an airplane at Travis Air Force Base in California and got off in a different world, so just like that I was transported to a different reality.

A simple definition of parallel would be two lines running the same direction, but which never intersect. That is a good definition of the two realities that people live in regarding our virus today. Everybody knows by now what the virus is, but we disagree completely on what the national response should be. Unfortunately, our lack of agreement seems to be running along political as well as parallel lines.

Views that reveal cowardice – or take courage

The two separate views are that:

1. The virus is very scary and extremely serious. It is so serious that if you leave your home you will get sick and possibly die. If you have a lawn service mow your lawn, you will get sick. If you get a haircut you will get sick. Should you attend church even 6 feet apart you will get sick. Should you have any human contact at all, especially if you are over 65, you will get sick.
2. The virus and our reaction to it is a complete farce. The lockdown is a ridiculous over-reaction akin to mass suicide. The government has turned us into lemmings and is now herding us toward the cliff. This lockdown is not about health at all but is instead an exercise in mass compliance.

Politics determines the view

There are exceptions to this, but it seems to me that the two realities break down along political lines. The left view is more akin to number one and the right view is more akin to number two. Keep in mind that for most people, whichever view they hold is their reality. I suppose it doesn’t occur to people that their view could be incorrect and simply reinforces a political viewpoint. Upon that political view could rest the national health and economy.

The evidence now supports the view that takes courage

In any event the longer the lockdown continues the more sense view number two makes. I know that hindsight is 20-20, and that it is easy to second guess people in crises decision making. But let’s look at some of the evidence that we currently have. By its own admission, the CDC sent out faulty tests including some already contaminated with the virus. Doctors, nurses, and anyone who expressed views opposed to the official narrative of where the virus came from and how serious it is and would be, found themselves sidelined, fired, marginalized etc.

Profiles in courage

Many of those people were heroes on the front lines of battle. They were concerned with the welfare of their people rather than politics or money. A recent book which I can recommend to you now explains much of the problem. It was written by a doctor named Judy Mikovits and co-authored by a lawyer named Kent Heckenlively with a forward by Robert Kennedy Jr. The title of the book is Plague of Corruption and it is a very disturbing account.

Dr. Mikovits is not the only one; she is just one going public with a book. Many other doctors, one by one, are coming forward and risking their careers. They will no longer watch while the tech giants, who control our access to information, censor and withhold potentially life-saving information.

The Erickson-Massihi affair: an example of courage

Doctor Dan Erickson is an ER Physician from Bakersfield California who also owns an urgent care clinic. He has performed thousands of virus tests. He concludes that confinement in quarantine is not only without benefit, but it is actually harmful because it weakens immunity. His view is that we should only quarantine the sick, not the healthy. He asks what kind of society forces perfectly healthy people into confinement in their homes? When he hears the expression, “we must stay safe,” he knows that is an effort to control the American people. That is not a quote from Dr. Erickson but the best paraphrase I can give you.¹

Ventilators doing more harm than good – where is the courage to do nothing in medicine?

Doctor Cameron Kyle- Siddel from NYC says that in his experience, which is extensive, ventilators are harmful to patients. 88% of patients placed on ventilators do not survive according to Dr. Siddel. He is the doctor who reported that treating patients with ventilation was like treating them on Mount Everest. In other words, they are deprived of oxygen and ventilation is then harmful.

A nurse from Portland Oregon who wishes to remain anonymous reports that in her city hospital many ICU units are completely empty. Hospitals are laying off staff and closing floors. The same is reportedly true in California hospitals. Laid-off nurses are starting to talk now because I suppose their reasoning is why not. They are revealing empty hospitals and the evidence is 800,000 laid off hospital workers.

Lack of courage allows – and appeals to – tyranny, federal…

In the meantime, the federal government gets to order people around. And how the feds love to look for enemies or even make some if they are hard to find. The voters are always being rallied to some national cause which requires their sacrifice. Everything must be bigger, and greater than the last boondoggle. Joe Biden,² unsatisfied with the 2.2 trillion of non-existent money, said,

The next stimulus needs to be a hell of a lot bigger.

Treasury secretary Stephen Mnuchin said, “this is war so we must spend what it takes.”

…and State and local

Its not just the federal government which oversteps its bounds. Unfortunately, state and local governments in certain localities are even worse. New York City provides the worst example yet. A congregation of Orthodox Jews in the Bronx held a funeral service for their dead Rabbi. So Mayor Bill de Blasio sent armed police! They had instructions to break up the funeral and summon or arrest the attendees. That is a very frightening example of what certain petty tyrants in America have taken it upon themselves to do. Fear, it seems, presents tyranny with an opportunity.

Courage to do nothing – sorely lacking

The police action against peaceful people honoring their rabbi on the occasion of his death brings to mind another question. Will the police support the American people and the Constitution which they take an oath to serve and protect? Or will they obey the illegal orders of their tyrant boss?³ The members of the NYC police department have answered that question for us. Other church congregations in other areas attending services sitting in their cars received $500 tickets from the local police. I suppose the police officers do not see the issue or understand what is at stake.

It takes courage to do nothing. Bill de Blasio could have said those Jews are grieving and besides, they are not hurting anyone, so leave them alone. The NYC police could have said we will not obey such an illegal order. But neither one of them did, and as a result America sunk just a little deeper toward police state tyranny.

Wrecking the economy…

The government tyrants seem to want everything and everyone working in lockstep with top-down command. Control of a completely isolated world is their agenda. For the most part, they are elected officials. But that doesn’t seem to occur to them or at least it doesn’t dissuade them. Elected dictator is a title which apparently did not end with World War Two.⁴

In addition to using the virus as an excuse to destroy our liberty and Constitutional rights including among others, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion they are destroying our ability to work and earn a living. With those go the American standard of living. We have been prepping for this for many years since we switched to bank currency backed by nothing but promises.⁵ Along with debasing the currency we hollowed out our manufacturing base through offshoring. So now 70% of our economy is consumption.

…then trying to stimulate it

We try to stimulate that once great consumption by giving away free money. But everything is closed so people have nothing to consume. The result is a decline in real incomes or a declining standard of living. If the actual cost of living is going up faster than your income is rising, the only way you can make ends meet is through borrowing. So, we are currently at the tail end of a decades-long debt binge at all levels. This goes from national governments down to individual wage earners. The whole system, including states, municipalities, and corporations has mired itself down completely in debt.

A problem building for over 100 years

The federal government in conjunction with the federal reserve panics and says we will fix this by printing money. They will then buy all the debt and carry it on our books forever through paying interest only. We will intimidate the federal reserve into lowering interest rates to zero, so we don’t even have to pay that. The laws of economics that have existed for thousands of years have suddenly been repealed.

Courage to do nothing…

The federal government missed a chance for a critical lesson coming from all this. They missed it because it takes something one does not find in the federal government anymore. That is the courage to do nothing. A string of high-profile corporate bankruptcies would have sent a correct lesson to the corporate world. The lesson could have been: you are responsible for your own mismanagement and failure to plan. You must set aside your own rainy-day fund, so when it is raining as it is now, you will survive. But the taxpayers will not save you.

…and cowardice leading to further harm

Instead the virus has provoked the second bailout in 12 years. If what I suggest had happened the first time we would be through the reset by now. But instead we just paper the gambling and mismanagement of American corporations with taxpayer money. In the current system future earnings must be allocated to past debt. It becomes impossible to expand the economy because the ever-increasing debt load must be dragged along until it no longer can even be dragged. The Federal government often not only does the wrong thing but the opposite of the right thing. Three hundred publicly traded companies got over 1 billion each of money intended to save small business.

A lesson from bankruptcy law

I’ve been a bankruptcy lawyer for over 40 years. So I can tell you that sometimes one must off-load the deadweight of debt. Bankruptcy can clear unproductive debt and restructure the rest. The economy at all levels would be productive again. Employees would be able to keep their jobs while the companies, restructured through chapter 11, continue to function. Investors and shareholders would learn to price in the risk of failure.

Finally, folks:

If you want to know why infrastructure is crumbling the answer is debt especially unresolved, unproductive debt. But alas, there will be no wave of corporate bankruptcies and therefore no reset. Because the courage to do nothing is sorely lacking in this plague year.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

Editor’s Notes

1 In observing—or illustrating—the Newton N. Minow Fairness Doctrine, your editor offers this attempt at rebuttal. The author of it charges Dr. Erickson and his partner Dr. Artin Massihi with typifying the Dunning-Kruger Effect. That last causes people of low ability to fail to recognize their limitation. But is the author of that “rebuttal” merely throwing his own Dunning-Kruger-style contempt off on Drs. Erickson and Massihi? Does he in fact shill for Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif), Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.), and other “View Number One” officials? Let the reader decide.

2 Joe Biden is, strictly speaking, not part of the federal government, or any government, today. But he wants to be, and says what he says in that context.

3 “An argument that didn’t work for Lt. William Calley at My Lai; an argument that didn’t work for the Nazis at Nuremberg.” Actor Kevin Pollak, as Lt. (jg) Samuel Weinberg USN, in A Few Good Men. Dir. Rob Reiner; with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollak, et al. Columbia Pictures, 1992. Ironically Rob “Meathead” Reiner (All in the Family), after directing this film, now supports petty tyrants. And uses language very like that which the Nazis used, both when Hitler ran for Chancellor and later.

4 Recall that the German people elected Adolf Hitler Chancellor before he dubbed himself Fuehrer, or Leader.

5 Arguably that began with the Federal Reserve System. Inarguably it accelerated when President Richard M. Nixon abandoned the gold standard.