Thanks Captain!
 
THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS
By: Bill Schoettler
March 27, 2022
“Having been born in the USA some 85 years ago I fully believed in Santa Claus. I was taken to Department Stores to sit on his lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. I even saw him land in a helicopter once and then sit in attendance to lines of children describing their fondest dreams.
As I grew older I came to realize that my presents were purchased by Mom and Dad, that the Tooth Fairy (who, in my day would leave a nickel) was also funded by the same source and the Easter Bunny didn’t lay colored eggs.
These beliefs were told to me, and to other children to explain the inexplicable, to provide an element of mystery in our lives, and to make our lives more colorful. I believed in magic, loved stories of historical fiction, knew that the Lone Ranger lived and Hopalong Cassidy was a real cowboy who fought the bad guys.
Today not only have my childhood illusions been shattered, but my adult fantasies about a responsible government have also gone away. The reliability of national organizations like the CDC, the FBI, and the CIA has been demonstrated to be venal and their skirts indescribably muddied.
My Mom and Dad are long gone but they left me with a trust in my country and its leaders. That trust no longer exists.
I heard about Covid, was vaccinated (twice) when the vaccine was first available, dutifully wore a mask, practiced social distancing, limited my forays into public places, and generally followed the government’s guidelines. Now I hear that:
a) the vaccines aren’t that effective,
b) have deleterious side effects for many,
c) natural immunity works better than any vaccine,
d) masks were (and are) useless,
e) the so-called death rates were misidentified and blown out of proportion.
f) enormous profits were made by those selling the ideas of the dangers of Covid (not to mention the sale of masks)
But I’m probably overthinking the situation. All I need to do is listen and learn, keep an open mind, look about me at how the world continues to function, and realize that all is not lost.
Unless, of course, we do not “go green”. Going green is the watchword of those who are fully aware of the dangers presented to our planet by greenhouse gasses, by climate change, bypassed gasses from four-legged critters, of course by burning fossil fuels and other transgressions against Mother Nature that will, if unchecked and unchanged, doom our planet and all life thereon.
The members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the President of the United States and other “world leaders” have determined, “based upon scientific evidence” that the world’s climate is changing in such a way that bodes ill for the future of humanity. This is “an existential threat”.
Sorry, I have seen the word “existential” so often used as an adjective preceding just about every other word that I had to look it up. The source I used was, of course, my iPhone and this is what I found;
“You use existential to describe fear, anxiety,
and other feelings that are caused by thinking
about human existence and death.”
Well, that puts an interesting twist on the word. So, I am led to believe that the word existential, when used in a sentence, suggests “death”, somewhere, somehow. I guess I just won’t use it…but please feel free to assume the word precedes any other word wherever the reader wishes to consider.
Those of us who have read history books and completed at least the 12th grade are usually familiar with the ICE AGE. In fact, there were many ice ages. During these periods of ancient history, great slabs of ice extended over the poles of the planet and advanced south (from the North Pole) and north (from the south pole). The ice and associated cold weather altered the nature of life over the entire planet, caused some species to disappear and others to appear. Mankind, whose personal history extends at least a couple million years back, somehow survived.
Giant mastodon, the wooly mammoth, saber-toothed tigers, and other creatures, some of which actually had a sweet tooth for humans, roamed the planet and on many occasions, actually dined on humans. During this time, this time of very, very cold weather, the animals (note, the hunters of those times did not possess assault rifles or other weaponry that was as efficient as that available today) passed gas (methane, bad, bad, bad for the atmosphere) and those humans who managed to survive would build fires (burning carbon and polluting the atmosphere) and sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally burning entire forests. Also, there were volcanic eruptions (which continue to this very day) spewing into the winds of the world noxious and dangerous fumes.
Experts who have studied these things have determined that the planet earth, as it moves around the sun will occasionally wobble or shift its vertical axis. This causes the planet to present different angles to the sun and the result is periodic (not necessarily “regular”, just occasional) shifts in the planet’s climate. Sometimes these shifts are short-term, sometimes longer term.
Sometimes the planet becomes hot and humid. There was an actual tropical-type of climate some 60,000,000 years ago when a meteorite struck the planet and caused a major climate change. This event resulted in the passing of various organisms which, had they survived a lot longer would have presented significant challenges to the humans who came along many years later. Dinosaurs, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and others would have been challenging.
But the climate changed, and the big guys disappeared. And the climate changed, and other big guys came around and they disappeared. And the planed went through ever-changing experiences with heat and cold and rain and snow and all sorts of weather extremes.
Along with these climate changes, somehow, and obviously with great difficulty, humans managed to survive. Our two-million-year history has been recorded, after a fashion, in stonework, cave drawings, fossils, and other accidental marks that have been interpreted by today’s experts. Also, not really that many years ago (some say as “recently” as six thousand years ago) we humans began to write and record our activities. Over time writing and recording have become more efficient until today, we have writings and recordings that bombard us hourly, leaving a plethora of information for our progeny to pour over and attempt to puzzle some sort of message. Assuming that progeny will even exist…though it is quite possible that some of the big guys will return.
Now we are engaged in a great human debate whether this planet or any other planet so afflicted can long endure…particularly in the face of whatever great changes may or may not come about in the near or not-so-near future.
Today I have no trust in the medical establishment, government spokespersons, any and all forms of news-dispensing organizations (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines). Politicians, always a suspect lot, haven’t demonstrated any improvement in their reliability. This attitude, incidentally, applies to ALL political parties, all governments, and all sources of public information.
The politicians and their cohorts, the scientific community (or some of them) have decided that sometime in the not-too-distant future mammalian life on this planet will be extinguished by GREENHOUSE GASES. The principal production of these gasses comes from the burning of fossil fuels.
I, we all have been assured by the experts-who-should-know that by converting our energy production from burning fossil fuels to solar, wind, and water for energy we will thus save the planet.
Now as I came to realize that the real source of my presents at Christmas time was not Santa Clause, the bunny rabbit did not lay colored eggs and there was no tooth fairy, I became more and more skeptical about the assurances from so-called authority figures. My parents meant well, presumably thinking that I was too young and unsophisticated to fully appreciate some of the realities of the world.
Now I hear that the Center for Disease Control withheld information about Covid and the real statistics of deaths and its causes because the CDC felt the public was too [young and] unsophisticated to fully appreciate some of the realities of the world.
Somehow this notion that the supervisors of the elected government, those responsible for protecting and caring for the citizenry responsible for their election, had determined that the electorate was not sufficiently sophisticated to fully understand that MASKS DID NOT HELP, that VACCINATIONS WERE NOT PERFECT, that SOCIAL DISTANCING WAS SILLY, that NATURAL IMMUNITY WAS BETTER THAN VACCINATIONS and the SHUTDOWNS WERE MORE DAMAGING TO THE ECONOMY THAN ANY SPREADING OF FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS WOULD BE TO THE GENERAL POPULATION.
No, there is no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy, no Easter bunny…and when my government tells me I am too unsophisticated to understand statistics on the real causes of deaths and the experimental nature of vaccinations and persists in unnecessary masking mandates and then announcing the danger is past on a date certain…I am skeptical. In fact, I am downright disbelieving.
When the government doesn’t trust the people, it is time to change the government. When the people can’t trust their government, it is time to change the government.
So sayeth I!
 
and me with the following addition – 30 plus years of climate disaster proven false and we still believe this stuff? It is there to gain power and riches, especially power of the people to oppress their free speech so necessary to our freedom from tyranny.”