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SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: President Jim Jones suggests you drink the Kool-Aid
By
Published: Apr 24, 2020
Category:
Pandemic: Dispatches and Essentials
Lucky you if you haven’t seen this:
How did it happen?
At yesterday’s White House press conference, William Bryan, the secretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, spoke about research his team had conducted that showed signs of the virus weakening in warmer and more humid temperatures. “The virus dies quickest in sunlight,” Bryan said.
Trump followed the secretary to the podium. He turned to Bryan. And then….
“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that it hasn’t been checked, and you’re going to test it.”
He turned to Dr. Deborah Birx, who has been reduced to a scarf model.
“The disinfectant, where it knocks the [coronavirus] out in a minute –— one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see, it gets in the lungs… so it’d be interesting to check that.”
From the Times:
When a reporter suggested that Mr. Trump’s proposed treatments might be dangerous, letting “people think they would be safe by going outside in the heat considering that so many people are dying in Florida,” Mr. Trump pivoted to another of his regular briefing themes: attacking the news media.
“Yeah, here — here we go,” he began, clearly irritated. “The new headline is, ‘Trump asks people to go outside, that’s dangerous.’ Here we go same old group. Are you ready? I hope people enjoy the sun, and if it has an impact, that’s great.”
from the Times:
After, Trump went to his private dining room off the Oval Office. Assorted aides who are still around will join him to rehash the day and offer their assessments on the briefings. Comfort food — including French fries and Diet Coke — is readily available. Then Mr. Trump turns back to his constant companion, television.
Meanwhile, Twitter got… hot. Medical warnings from medical people, of course. And…
In all seriousness, back in the day, I decided to give my large detached garage a “good cleaning” & scrub mixing Clorox & Ammonia. All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. Luckily, I opened the garage door all the way & went outside. I could have easily died.
I knew a maintenance guy, years ago, who died from mixing ammonia and bleach, cleaning a toilet. Got dizzy, went out to sit in his truck, and that’s where they found him dead.
Do you hit the body with light before or after you’ve died from injecting disinfectant into your body?
First you inject disinfectant. Then you cut the chest open, to get light directly on lungs and other organs. Make sure you wear a mask and gloves, because safety first!
When does sacrificing a child to Krakatoa enter the GOP plan for curing the virus?
And then, the one I was waiting for: Is this the Jim Jones Kool-Aid moment?
Remember Jonestown? I do. Funny thing: I’ve been reading about Jonestown for days.
from a San Diego State University study:
The Jonestown story is the story of the Peoples Temple, a religious cult created by Jim Jones. This religious group based in California immigrated to Guyana in the mid-1970s to create an agricultural utopia. On November 18, 1978, after a U.S. Congressman and four others were assassinated there, Jones commanded his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, starting with the children first. In all, there were over 900 who died in Jonestown, including Jim Jones, who died from a gunshot wound to the head.
The key question: murder… or mass suicide?
From Rolling Stone:
When Jones implemented the actual suicide plan in Jonestown, there were armed guards with guns and crossbows to ensure that nobody was getting out alive. Some victims were found to have marks on their bodies, suggesting they were injected with the poison. Adding to the mass murder argument is that numerous young children died in Jonestown who couldn’t possibly know what they were doing.
One of the proponents for the mass murder view is author Tim Reiterman, who, as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, was injured during the shooting attack on Congressman Ryan at the airstrip. “Jones put all the pieces in place for a last act of self-destruction,” he wrote, “then gave the order to kill the children first, sealing everyone’s fate.”
Tim Carter, who lost his wife and baby son in Jonestown, also concurs that it was mass murder. “Jones was going to kill everybody, no matter what,” he says. “There were so many lies that Jones told to people to create a state of siege mentality in the community, that even those that were making ‘a principled stand of revolutionary suicide’ probably were influenced a lot by the lies that he was telling them.”
Short answer: Nobody joins a cult. They just forget to leave.
Cue the reaper.
THE DAILY STOIC
Nero was paranoid that people were plotting his overthrow, so he took increasingly violent measures to protect himself, making far more enemies in the process. “He who indulges empty fears,” Seneca wrote, “earns himself real ones.”
A THRILLER TO READ: PARIS, 1938, USA 2020
The novel is “Mission to Paris,” by Alan Furst. From my review:
It begins with an author’s note.
In the 1930s, the Nazi government of Germany, bitterly resentful at having lost the 1914 war, determined to destroy its traditional enemy, France. Force of arms lay in the future, but a small bureau in the Reich Foreign Ministry undertook operations to weaken French morale and degrade France’s will to defend herself. This strategy, using ancient and well- proven methods, was known as political warfare.
The plot driver is dirty money. An eternal theme, announced in the very first paragraphs:
In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive. The autumn of the year 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafés, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war – that too had its moment. Almost anything, really, except money. Or, rather, German money. A curious silence, for hundreds of millions of francs – tens of millions of dollars – had been paid to some of the most distinguished citizens of France since Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933. But maybe not so curious, because those who had taken the money were aware of a certain shadow in these transactions and, in that shadow, the people who require darkness for the kind of work they do.
The distinguished citizens, had they been willing to talk about it, would have admitted that the Germans, the political operatives who offered the bounty, were surprisingly adept. They knew how to soften a conscience, presented bribery as little more than a form of sophisticated commerce, of the sort that evolves in salons and offices and the private rooms of banks — a gentleman’s treason. And the operatives could depend on one hard- edged principle: that those who style themselves as men of the world know there is an iron fist in every velvet glove, understand what might await them in the shadows and so, having decided to play the game, they will obey its rules. Still, human nature being what it is, there will forever be somebody, won’t there, who will not.
I love the tension between the lively start of the fall season in Paris and the conversation no one wants to have about German money. The way that money compromises the rich Frenchmen who take it. The presence of shady characters. So very contemporary! [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. To read the first chapter, click here.]
THE ROLLING STONES, JUST RELEASED: “LIVING IN A GHOST TOWN”
We’re all living in a ghost town
Living in a ghost town
We were so beautiful
I was your man about town
Living in this ghost town
Ain’t having any fun
If I want a party
It’s a party of one
ESSENTIALS AND DISPATCHES
Everything, all in one place.
UPDATE: EO Hand Soap is available again.
UPDATE: I spoke with a NYC lung specialist. He endorses Vitamin D, but warns you not to double/triple dose. In large doses, Vitamin D becomes toxic.
