Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News  1/17/2023

Telling stories, avoiding “the” story

All areas of national import, contention or dispute involve multiple perspectives, with a variety of approaches and positions. Ours is a constitutional democracy with enshrined freedoms and rights to express, pontificate, and even to lie and misrepresent. Disagreeing with said prevarications should involve opposing views and facts, rather than behind-the-scenes silencing.

We see how irreconcilable approaches to differing opinions—more information and views, versus censoring and calling for antagonists to just shut up—usually illustrate who is right and who is wrong. Invariably, those using their power and influence to silence their opponents are the ones who were wrong in the first place. They’re so taken with their own righteousness that to differ is quasi-evil.

Another tactic: Issue so many “stories,” with tangential aspects of any given issue, that mere consumers of news become so confused over the various (even devious) opinions and analyses that they throw up their hands in frustration, surrendering to the apparent unknowability of what’s true.

When even a “CNN medical analyst must admit that there’s been an ‘overcounting’ of COVID deaths” (Sarah Arnold, Townhall.com, 1/14), it demolishes one of the core narratives of the now-3-year “emergency” pandemic paradigm: Over a million dead Americans, almost 7 million worldwide, from COVID. However, over that period, about 10 million Americans have died from all causes.

So, just like the skeptics told us from the beginning, COVID deaths have been grossly exaggerated by calling every crash or violence victim, E.R. visit and coronary fatality, that tested positive in the hospital, a “COVID” death. Legitimate estimates from other countries put the deaths from only COVID at a fraction of that.

“A new study from Casey B. Mulligan and Rob Arnett published in the journal Inquiry finds that non-COVID deaths were highly elevated above expected trends in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021… approximately 97,000 Americans died annually (not including COVID deaths) above the baseline trend, a statistic known as ‘excess deaths.’” (“New study offers even more proof lockdowns were deadly” by Brad Polumbo)

Heart-wrenching stories of lost loved ones, usually aged and already infirm, are tragic, but not shocking. “The story” has always undermined the obsession by government/medical/media cabals to allow only one narrative, one solution, one national strategy. Opposing views, even expert opinions, were consigned to the “dark hole” of suppressed “misinformation.” “Twitter files” revelations prove it.

The “vaxx and mask mandate” crowd continues intimidation, as highly-educated astrophysicist and “science communicator” Neil deGrasse Tyson did recently. He arrogantly guilt-tripped viewers to wear masks, despite the scarcity, after 3 years, of any scientific proof that masks reduce infection and deaths in side-by-side comparisons of schools, states or nations.

Do you feel vulnerable and safer, with a paper or cloth face covering that keeps, at best, a fraction of viruses and germs out of your lungs? I won’t stop you or think less of you—unless you do so in a car by yourself or walking outdoors in fresh air, you fool. Too harsh?

Many still profess the illusion of 100 percent protection from vaccines, or deny the heart-related side effects in otherwise healthy young people, or insist that children—with near-zero vulnerability to COVID—benefit from “the jab.” I disregard, disrespect and despise such people.

That some feel superiority or infallibility because those with jail cells and guns agree with them; that some find it justified for Twitter (and Facebook, YouTube et al) to have censored contrary views, even those with highly-qualified, data-proven expertise—at the now-known insistence of state medical despots;

That to this day they will not condemn unconstitutional “takings,” and call for those who lost property, livelihoods, military rank and familial affection, to “be made whole”—Americans should hold them up for scorn and ridicule in perpetuity and demand legal barriers, punishable by fines and incarceration, be erected to prevent such future tyrannical mandates.

Unfortunately, until we eradicate pandemic-justified voting procedures—mail-in ballots, unsecured drop boxes, and unaccountable digital tabulation records—Americans won’t even be able to reliably elect opponents of the medical/national security/government establishment. To most of us: that’s a big problem; to them: it’s a feature assuring perpetual control.

I commend the editor for including columnist Michael Reagan; if you missed it, it’s worth looking up (redbluffdailynews.com). As of Sunday morning, the scandal, the crimes, deflections, prevarications and flat-out lying over White House Occupant Joe Biden’s theft of “top secret,” classified material—placed in unsecured locations over six years, with Biden’s professed ignorance—now commands the media’s obsession.

The response to the original “just 10 documents in the Penn Biden Center” story invoked knee-jerk false equivalency to then-President Trump’s transfer of documents he authoritatively declassified while President in Washington, DC and upon arriving in Mar-a-Lago, preceding Joe Biden’s oath of office. Trump kept them secured, locked, guarded by Secret Service, and not spread on the floor until the illegal FBI raiders put them there.

1) Who handled Biden’s “classified” documents (he had no more authority to declassify than Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger or Obama’s staff)? 2) Their handling and moving were illegal. 3) They were in at least four locations (Univ. of Pennsylvania office, the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s garage, Biden’s home). 4) Some “classified” documents involve the questionable Ukraine affairs of Joe and Hunter and, potentially, Chinese connections and corrupt Hunter dealings. That’s “the story.”