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

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Darrell Castle talks about his observation that in this, our Plague Year, we seem to be divided into two alternate realities, and our government lacks the courage to do nothing.

Transcription / Notes:

A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR—THE COURAGE TO DO NOTHING

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today is Friday, May 1, 2020, and on this Report, I will be talking about the virus once again, the plague that threatens humanity in many ways. The invisible enemy upon which we wage war. This is Day 42 of House Arrest for the Castle family, so six full weeks we have been confined 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 are flying again. I have a friend who went to Argentina for a couple of weeks and is stuck there until at least September 1, since flights both out and in have been banned until then.

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.

The two separate views are as follows:

1.  View number 1 is that 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 your lawn mowed by a lawn service, you will get sick. If you get a haircut you will get sick. If you attend church, even six 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.   View number 2 is that the virus, and our reaction to it, is a complete farce. The lockdown is a ridiculous over-reaction akin to mass suicide. We have been turned into lemmings by the government and are now being herded toward the cliff. This lockdown is not about health at all, but is instead, an exercise in mass compliance.

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

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 crisis 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., were sidelined, fired, marginalized, etc.

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, 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 doctor with this point-of-view. She is just one going public with a book. There are many other doctors who, one by one, are coming forward and risking their careers. They are no longer willing to watch while potentially life saving information is censored and withheld by the tech giants who control our access to information.

Doctor Dan Erickson is an ER Physician from Bakersfield California who also owns an urgent care clinic which has performed thousands of virus tests. His conclusion is 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 the question what kind of society forces perfectly healthy people into confinement in their homes? He says that when he hears the expression that 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.

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.

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, 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.”

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

The police action against peaceful people honoring their rabbi on the occasion of his death brings to mind the question of whether the police will support the American people and the Constitution, which they take an oath to serve and protect, or whether they will obey the illegal orders of their tyrant boss. 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 were issued $500 tickets by 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.

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.

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 and 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. Along with debasing the currency, we hollowed out our manufacturing base through offshoring so that 70% of our economy is consumption.

We try to stimulate that once great consumption by giving away free money, but everything is closed, so there is 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 from national governments down to individual wage earners. The whole system, including states, municipalities, and corporations are completely mired down in debt.

The federal government, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve, panics and says we will fix this by printing money and buying all the debt and carrying 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.

The federal government missed a chance for a critical lesson coming from all this. It was missed because it takes something not found in the federal government anymore, and 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 that when it is raining as it is now, you will survive but the taxpayers will not save you.

Instead the virus has provoked the second bailout in twelve years. If what I suggest had been done 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.

I’ve been a bankruptcy lawyer for over 40 years, and I can tell you that the deadweight of debt must sometimes be off loaded. 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,

Thanks for listening.