Do you trust the government – any government?

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is the 24^th day of September in the year 2021. Today I will be talking about the trustworthiness of government in many areas but primarily and specifically in the area of COVID-19 and the vaccines that the government insists we accept. My premise is that those who refuse the vaccine do not trust the government at least not as much as those who accept the vaccine. Let’s look at what trusting government often does for us.

The Castle family is both happy and sad this week as the family daughter, her husband, and her dog have returned to the grand and glorious city of angels after 10 days with her parents. We saw her for the first time in 2 years and we will endeavor to keep that from happening again. My desire would be for the daughter to flee from grand and glorious Los Angeles for just about anywhere, but that is up to her and her husband.

Local government issue: Memphis, Tennessee

I will start my topic of government trustworthiness with a look at my own city of Memphis, Tennessee as reported by The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), our daily newspaper. This article was front page headline on Wednesday the 22^nd which was by coincidence the first day of fall. Headline: “They need to take this vaccination, less than half of Memphis police and fire departments are vaccinated.” Well then, my premise would be that critical members of the city government do not buy into what the government is attempting to sell them, i.e., that the vaccine is safe and effective.

Quote from the article:

The Memphis police and fire departments are less than 50% vaccinated, and trail Shelby County’s overall vaccination rate, according to data from the city of Memphis. The data shows that vaccine hesitancy is widespread among the city’s first responders and other city staff.

Let’s pause the quote for a moment for me to say that hesitancy is an objectionable word because refusal would be more accurate. These are people out there on the front lines dealing with all kinds everyday and they are not hesitant, they are refusing in mass numbers.

City solid waste employees are 37% vaccinated and parks and neighborhoods are 40% vaccinated, city data showed. Shelby County has a 51.7% vaccination rate over a much larger group of people.

Yes that 51.7% includes all the primarily white suburbs while the Memphis number is just city employees in a 67% black city. You are about to see that the city council did not take these numbers like gentlemen and women.

An angry council member

The city employee vaccination rate sparked an angry outburst from Memphis City Councilman Edmund Ford, Sr. who told the city administration it needs to mandate vaccinations, something Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has not done.

Oh yes, go ahead and follow your leader down the road to losing 50% of police and fire protection for your city that makes perfect sense councilman. If you don’t believe me let New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago serve as guides for the wisdom of that approach.

Everyone needs to wake the hell up, Ford said in a monologue from the council dais after Alex Smith, the city’s head of human resources, told the council the city’s vaccination rate is about 50% and presented department level vaccination data. Shut this place down—or lay their asses off, Ford told Smith during a council committee hearing where she presented vaccination stats for the city’s 8,200 full-time and part-time employees.

The article further states that Mr. Ford, when he is not sitting in City Council, runs a funeral home. Mr. Ford further alleges that COVID-19 deaths are overwhelming his funeral practice. Samuel Hardiman, who wrote the Commercial Appeal piece, seems not to have tried to check Mr. Ford’s allegations. To be specific, he seems not to have tried to ascertain, from clinical facts, whether a death someone lists on a death certificate as being of COVID-19 was merely a death with it and of another cause. – Ed.

Fear leads government to do crazy things

We are living in an age of paralyzing fear, not just in Memphis, but everywhere. When people live in fear, they will submit to all kinds of mischief just to feel a little bit safer. Governments are more than happy to take advantage of that fear to advance their own power and control over the people they are supposed to serve. For example, the nation of Austria not only mandates the vaccines, but if you are not vaccinated you are denied social services. If you are laid off due to government restrictions and you are not vaccinated, you are denied unemployment compensation.

Right now, the City of Memphis administration has not taken a definitive stance on whether it intends to mandate the vaccines for all employees or not. It seems to me that the mayor and city council are waiting for OSHA at the direction of the president, to bail them out by applying the 100-employee private company doctrine to cities as well. At that point the vaccine could be mandated and if half the police quit, they could point to the president and OSHA and say this chaos is on them not us.

Look everywhere

I have chosen to use my own city as the example, but the truth is it is happening almost everywhere. Memphis is a great place to live, work, and raise a family. The leadership of this city led us through the year of riots unscathed and that was no small thing. Working together with the leaders of various religious faiths, it somehow worked, for now.

Looking at statistics for almost two years and reading my local newspaper as well as national publications has convinced me of a few things. Most people believe that cloth masks work, that children are dying by the thousands from COVID, and that vaccines will stop the spread, but as in many professions, those on the frontlines usually have a view that others don’t.

Los Angeles

Memphis is not the only place where a majority of front-line city employees are not vaccinated. The Los Angeles police, and fire unions are standing together to resist the mandates of the governor and mayor. The policies of the state of California and especially the city of Los Angeles have brought about the literal ruination of that city. I doubt that once beautiful place will ever return to anything like normal. Crime is rampart due in part to bail reform which has released thousands of felons onto the streets to commit new crimes for which if caught they are quickly released again.

Tens of thousands of homeless live in camps on the streets of Downtown Los Angeles. It is so bad that part of the city has been declared a Typhus danger zone. Typhus is a disease that is common in the steaming jungles of the Far East. It is spread through lack of sanitation and hot unsanitary air, along with filth and human waste left in public on the streets where people walk. and until now Typhus has been unheard of in the United States. Very contagious and dangerous, it has infected police officers and other frontline people in the city of angels.

States of California and New York

The people of California just voted not to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, so I assume they believe in government and have confidence in government although government has turned the state into the third world for many. I don’t get it, but then that is why I don’t live in California. It seems that in some states, government sees its job as making life as difficult for residents as possible.

California is not alone in its effort to commit suicide by government. New York joins California as a leader in bail reform and as a result murder and other violent crimes are soaring. Once the greatest city in the world, New York is now almost unlivable thanks to government. COVID policy, not the virus, but the reaction to it by government, has closed thousands of stores and restaurants. No One can enter any building open to the public unless they have a certificate of vaccination. Your papers please is now common and accepted in New York.

What’s left for New York City?

The riots of 2020 left the city devastated with stores along the famed miles of 5^th Avenue boarded up. Even Macys of Harold Square was looted. Government would not permit confronting the rioters, so the police stood down. Couple the riots with bail reform which released thousands of prisoners and drug addicts to wonder the streets victimizing and terrorizing people and what you have is a mass exodus. New York continues to lose its tax base as more and more people vote with their feet and pocketbooks.

Take away the excitement, the culture, the theater, and the restaurants and what you have left is a government created dark, dirty, expensive, and very difficult place to live. Like Los Angeles I don’t see New York coming back anytime soon if ever. The people who left during the virus lockdown and discovered they could work from home as well as in a box on Wall Street discovered something else as well. Work from home did not have to be home in New York City. They could work from home in Nashville, Austin, or Orlando and get the same or better pay with much better living conditions and a tiny fraction of the expense.

Even in Massachusetts they don’t trust the government

Even Massachusetts, bastion of progressive thought and government, is suffering some of the same problems. Government thought it would be able to impose vaccine mandates on City employees without objection. After all, who would be opposed to government’s efforts to keep us all safe by administering a safe and effective drug into our bodies. Well, the same front line city employees objected and are now fighting the City of Boston to resist the vaccine mandates. These are people out there interacting with all kinds of people everyday and yet they do not want the vaccine. Perhaps they have learned something that frontline nurses have learned as well and that is that the whole campaign of intimidation and coercion is based on lies instead of science and well researched facts.

Follow the science they are told, believe the science. Well, they have seen what the vaccines do and they have heard the government’s science and they are not buying it. Science bought and paid for is not science in any objective sense but just more government corruption. Stack all the problems I just mentioned on top of toxic lockdowns and mandates due to misguided vaccine policies and what you get is a recipe for despair and hopelessness in our cities.

As parts of it exempt themselves, e.g., Congress

Despair in the cities, but not in Congress because the people’s House wants to exempt itself from the mandates. Members, their staff, and their other departments will be exempt and why not. Congress is legislative, not executive so the president has no legal control over them. Maybe members pf congress realize that the mandates are not about safety, or health, or even the virus, but instead they are about the passport.

Finally, folks, no I do not trust government. I do not trust the ones who brought us the Vietnam War, the end of the gold standard with its inevitable inflation, the war on poverty, war on cancer, war on drugs, war on terror, war in Iraq, 20-year war and 1 week withdrawal from Afghanistan, and now the war on COVID 19. It seems that with each war we end up with more of the enemy, so no I don’t trust government to put something in my body that has no legal liability if it kills or maims me.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

This article first appeared on the author’s website and appears here by permission.

See also this article that addresses specifically the shifting – and fraudulent – COVID-19 government narrative. – Ed.