Obscure Word Describes How America Feels

There's a German word, "weltschmerz", that I learned years ago.  Sometimes you encounter a word and then think about when you might possibly use it.  We've heard of  "25-cent word", or a word used in place of a more common word to appear more sophisticated. A 50-cent word, not to be confused with words coming from the eponymously named hip-hop artist, is one that is real obscure.  I don't know where weltschmerz falls, though surely it's worth at least 25 cents, maybe 50.

First, a little etymology.  The word comes from "Welt" meaning world and "Schmerz" meaning pain.  It came into the lexicon sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century and it captured the melancholy and pessimism of the European Romantic era.  The word describes a world in pain.

America is in the grip of a societal nihilism, which is causing a world of pain.  We're disillusioned, demoralized, and no longer trust our institutions.  Perhaps our pain comes from decisions by Wizards, the elite, the intelligentsia, the political class, and their cohort?  How did they cause the pain and why are we feeling weltschmerz?

Afghanistan

By now we've seen the horrific scenes.  The takeover of the Taliban, the lightning surrender of Afghan forces, and chaos at Kabul's airport flooded our screens.  A recent poll revealed 65% of those surveyed felt America's 20-year military/nation-building effort was totally wasted.  Two mothers who'd lost sons in Afghanistan, in a television interview, were certain that there had to be a polling mistake.  It was inconceivable that their sons had fought for no purpose.  They were there to protect the United States, defend freedom, and promote democratic values.

9/11

Recall the mood of the nation on September 12, 2001.  The 43rd president stood on the rubble of the Twin Towers and told everyone that the terrorists would hear from us soon.  Later he stood before Congress and proclaimed, and I paraphrase, "you're either with us or against us" in regard to the new War on Terror.  I remember 9/11 very clearly.  What struck me most was the gravity of the president's words to Congress.  Much like Iraq, we would soon "own" a country for many years.  I think most Americans perceived our intentions were to hunt down the perpetrators of 9/11.  Those identified as perpetrators were not Afghani nationals and were mostly from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).  We were told that the US was after their mastermind, a KSA national by the name of Bin Laden.

Hunting Them Down

It's a rare event when the US Army gets deployed to hunt down a single person, or a single person and his close associates.  Actually, a little more than a decade before 9/11, they did just that, rooting out a military dictator named Noriega from the land of my birth.  Was the mission about rooting out Bin Laden & Associates or more?  As I feared, it was much, much more.  But why did it expand into so much more?  Remember the movie, Munich?  This movie depicted the Mossad's revenge against perpetrators behind the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.  No countries were invaded and the Mossad got their targets.

Owning a Country

Our approach was to own and run a country.  Never mind that the mighty Soviet Union and Alexander the Great met their fate in the rugged Afghan terrain and they weren't involved in nation building.  Our elite told us, this time it would be different.  Keep in mind that Afghanistan is a made up country of many warring tribes.  They'd been in the middle of a civil war for the decade of the 1990s.  How were we going to bring order to the inherent chaos?  In our wisdom, we, along with the United Nations, decided to create a security force that would train the Afghan military, what existed of it, and police force against the mighty Taliban.  I remember watching and reading reports about how poorly this effort was going in the early 2000s.  The 44th President of the United States saw the problem too and ramped up to 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.  As I've noted in my writing and speeches, wars/nation building are expensive endeavors and profitable if you're on the correct side of the ledger.

Afghan Military

By any objective evaluation, it was clear the Afghan military could not stand on its own.  Moreover, the initial target of our wrath was killed in 2011 and that occurred in a neighboring country.  What was our mission post Bin Laden?  More nation building.  After many years of attempting to stabilize the country and train Afghan forces, it became politically expedient to withdraw our forces.   Make no mistake, the Taliban would eventually rule Afghanistan, it was just a matter of when.

US Departs

The issue is less about the inevitable withdrawal and more about the gross miscalculation and planning.  For those that compare this withdrawal to Saigon in 1975, I challenge that comparison.  This is MUCH worse.  The optics are worse.  The mission in Vietnam, though questionable in scope, was to stem the fall of dominos.  This was the USA's war.  The images on the nightly news became too much.  We had the Paris Peace Accords.  There was at least some structure to the end of the conflict, a conflict that ultimately was between North and South Vietnam.

This was a global War on Terror.  We engaged our allies for this war.  There were no Paris Peace Accords.   Our allies are completely disillusioned with the method of US withdrawal.  Evidently, they weren't consulted.  They question our commitment overseas.  The bell rang and the Taliban called time.  They put the chairs on the table and waited for us to head out the door.  Except we left guests behind and so did our allies.

How nice would it have been to still control Bagram air base and have another air evacuation site?  Why did mass numbers of US military exit stage left prior to the evacuation of US and loyal Afghanis?  These missteps were recognized by the current administration when they sent thousands more troops that were previously evacuated.

We have Republicans blaming Democrats and Democrats blaming the 45th president.  We have a president whose cognitive struggles place him at a decided disadvantage in this key moment in American foreign policy, not to mention logistics.  For those who suggest that it's not the president but his advisors who crafted the evacuation plan, I pose the same questions as earlier.  Remember these are the elite, the best and brightest, the most educated, and the ones who often lecture the unwashed masses about what's best for them.

This is an inflection point in American history.  The images on our screens from Afghanistan represent the utter failure of the elite, the elite entrusted to guide our nation.  The elite have no answers.  What can they say about Afghani civilians clutching to the wheel well of a transport plane?  What can they say about American war material in the hands of those who do not recognize basic human rights for women?  What can they say to Americans and trusted Afghanis, huddled in whatever refuge they can find, and responsible for their own transport to the Kabul airport?

Then we have those two mothers on TV, in disbelief that 2/3 of the nation felt their sons died in vain.  What do we tell them?  This is weltschmerz.

The Virus

In the Spring of 2020, I posted an essay where I posited that our response to the virus would be the largest public policy error in US history.  My resolve is as firm as ever.  Just consider the following.  We have completely disrupted our society for a virus with a roughly 0.3% mortality rate.  Moreover, mortality is heavily confined to specific cohorts (older adults, one or more comorbidities).  Our health experts, not all of them of course, directed us to lock down and encircled us in fear.  This ran contrary to historic public health policy.  I recently read that this "new" policy was hatched in 2005, though never put into action.  A depressed social mood and social fragility made us more vulnerable to a policy implementation nixed fifteen years earlier.  The president, governors, mayors, county executives, and others gave the lockdown orders.  The formerly rugged American individualism got suppressed and embraced the lockdown (not everywhere of course).

Political Division

The messaging from public health experts, like the head of the NIAID, has been, to be polite, inconsistent.  Sadly, this government bureaucrat rose to prominence during one of the more politically divisive moments in American history.  We experienced (still are) a political civil war even though the War Between the States ended more than 150 years ago.  The emergence of this virus could not have come at a worst time socially and politically.  The ruling class, the Praetorian Guard, the elite, desperately wanted to dispose of the 45th president.  If the president suggested two plus two equaled four, there would no doubt be opposition.  The elite's visceral hatred of 45 was frankly distracting.  The 45th president was often his own worst enemy.  This conflict, regrettably spilled over into public health policy and was unproductive.

Even before the virus, I felt a great sense of weltschmerz during the 2016 election when presented the two major party candidates, one of whom was completely undesired by the mainstream elements of his party — he eventually became president.  The other coopted the party to the exclusion of a stronger candidate.  This was the political backdrop for virus policy.  Rather than experiencing the logical separation of politics and public health, they became intertwined.

Beating the Virus

We were told to "flatten the curve", which I reasoned was a euphemism for postponing death.  We were told to wear masks, even though the coronavirus are nanoparticles smaller than the weave of an N95 mask, not to mention surgical masks and other improvised face coverings.  We were told we could "beat" this virus.  I never envisioned victory, but rather coexistence.  We were told that vaccines would help us eradicate the virus.  It was clear from the application for the mRNA inoculation, that these medicines were not intended to prevent disease but rather lessen severity, a worthy outcome.  Now we're learning that two jabs may be insufficient (Israel is quickly discovering this) and we need a third.  Did you ever think of your body as a computer requiring frequent virus upgrades and patches?

Throughout this pandemic episode, discussion of therapeutics has been eradicated from mainstream coverage.  Why?  I remember watching a cable news channel in the Summer of 2020 and a doctor in Texas begging for a therapeutic she'd used successfully in her practice.  She tried to order more from a supplier and was rejected since the drug was not approved for the virus.  Another doctor gave testimony to a senate committee late in 2020 and begged the FDA and CDC to review highly efficacious clinical data on the use of another therapeutic.  I listened to other doctors using still other treatments successfully in their practice.

It's often argued that we need to follow the science — the science is settled.  Science is often unsettled, particularly with something as new as this virus.  We've settled on science when we should be trying to unsettle it and discover alternatives.  It's valid to explore inoculations and therapeutics and it should be a choice made by the individual and their physician.  Public health authorities have removed this choice.  Why?

Emergency Use Authorization

It was maybe 3-4 months ago that someone who did financial research on pharmaceutical companies informed me the reason we couldn't have therapeutics discussed in the mainstream narrative.  The inoculations (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J) could only receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) if there were no alternatives for treating the virus.  Thus, if there were proven therapeutics, there'd be no need for EUA.  You'd still have inoculations, but they'd progress through the normal authorization process.   The American public, and beyond, were never given a fair chance to evaluate alternatives — it was a jab in the arm or bust.

This is not a criticism of inoculations, but their ubiquitous distribution.  Last year, I listened to an epidemiologist seriously question mass vaccinations.  He suggested that mass vaccinations would have the effect of making the vaccinated a threat to the unvaccinated by spreading variants (this is occurring now).  One of the inventors of mRNA, Dr. Robert Malone, has gone on record with similar criticisms, citing the need to vaccinate the most vulnerable (i.e.) those in the cohort most likely to die from infection.

Segregation

If the story ended here, there'd still be a feeling of disillusionment/weltschmerz.  What's emerged is something I forecast last year, vaccine passports.  In an already divided nation, we've laid yet another fence post by segregating the jabbed and the un-jabbed.  Now, someone's economic well-being may be dependent on getting jabbed.  If someone had told you in 2019 that we'd have an airborne virus with the survivability rates noted earlier, that we could fire employees for refusing to comply with an inoculation brought forth under an EUA, to the exclusion of therapeutics, would you have believed it?

In 1976, the Swine Flu vaccine got pulled after a small number of adverse reactions.  Adverse reactions now are multiples of the Swine Flu and yet the inoculations remain unquestioned.  Consider also that you may not take legal action against the pharmaceutical company or the federal government for an adverse effect that causes injury.  This is another feature of EUA.

If the elite health authorities don't want you to consider therapeutics, and the inoculation's effectiveness wanes and doesn't keep the recipient from spreading virus, and your risk of mortality is low based on your cohort, why should someone's economic livelihood be threatened if they want to opt out of the jab?  Why does social and traditional media de-platform, discredit, ostracize, demonize, and diminish those with alternative views on this health issue?  Read about the visceral attacks levied on the doctors behind the Great Barrington Declaration who offended by suggesting a more focused approach to virus policy, the vulnerable cohorts I noted.

We're marginalizing a segment of society whose offense is to make a decision about their health care.  We've not severely marginalized people for making harmful and questionable health care choices before.  Why start now given our societal polarization?

Demoralizing Policies

The nation is demoralized and divided by public health policy.  This policy has done much to divide us further when it had the opportunity to galvanize the nation at a time of great need.   Norway recently declared the pandemic over and has moved to the endemic phase.  They'll treat COVID like other circulating airborne viruses.  Why can't we adopt this approach?  Our public health authorities have lost the trust of millions of Americans.  It's one thing to not trust politicians, bankers, lawyers, and used car salesmen.  It's another when science loses the public's trust.   We've lost agency over our own bodies — odd, isn't it?  The existing weltschmerz will widen.

Economic Impacts of Virus

Much of my assessment in 2020 about the virus has come to fruition.  The impact of the public health policy response on the economy has been predictably disastrous.  We told people to stay home.  We arbitrarily branded some workers as non-essential.  We told schools to shut down.  We placed parents in the role of teachers.  We placed disadvantaged students and parents in a worse position.  I remember naively thinking the schools that surely would remain open would be those with a high percentage of free/reduced lunch.  I was wrong.  Most of the time, shuttering those schools would be branded as racist.  Not this time of course.  It didn't fit the narrative.

We told people to stop paying rent.  We closed the courts so landlords could not take action.  The CDC told us there was an unprecedented pandemic and that was the justification for withholding rent.  When the Supreme Court ruled the CDC action unconstitutional, the president issued an executive order extending the rent moratorium.

When business were told to shutter, the government offered, through the banking system, a forgivable loan based on payroll.  They did this twice.  For many businesses, the lifeline was insufficient.  Since we told people to stay home, the federal government augmented unemployment benefits.  Then the authorities were surprised that workers didn't return to their former positions because a) they were panicked about the virus and b) staying home made financial sense.

In a meeting I recently attended consisting of several municipalities and two large school districts, they uttered the same refrain.  They are badly short of employees.

Meanwhile, income and wealth disparity worsened during the pandemic.  Public health policy placed the disadvantaged in a worse economic position.

I wrote in November of 2019 that the stock markets were as risky as ever and that was borne out in February of 2020.  They're even riskier now.  The next market downturn will be difficult for individuals and institutions.  The policy response to the virus has distorted just about every facet of our economy.  Every distortion spawns another government program — rinse and repeat.

The public will look to Washington D.C. and the Wizards for salvation again.  They'll be in a deep state of weltschmerz when they realize their salvation will not be close at hand while politicians debate who gets the spoils of the next budget deficit.

American Psyche

I didn't predict the virus.  I have been concerned for a few years, however, about the public's reaction to a crisis.  We've been in a persistently declining social mood.  We paved this path by embracing Freedom FROM as opposed to Freedom OF.  See, Freedom OF is constitutionally guaranteed.  They are rights granted to all Americans by default.  Government is there to ensure those rights are not abridged.  Politically, we've drifted, regardless of party in power, towards Freedom FROM.  Government is more than happy to provide that type of freedom, but it comes at a cost.  We're witnessing those costs now.

We're a fragile society.  We're easily outraged, angered, panicked, and aggrieved.  We've utterly lost our sense of humor.  Ask comedians who can no longer perform on college campuses.  Speaking of college campuses, we're no longer free to speak at what was once the bastion of free speech.  Students can get arrested for handing out pocket constitutions on campus.  We ask for emotional protection.  A vocal minority engenders groupthink.  Critical thinking gets discarded.

It used to be that we could understand the world through traditional information channels.  Those channels are now coopted by the Wizards, elites, cognoscenti, and others.  Many realize the corruption of those channels and seek truth elsewhere.  We've lost TRUST.  Access to truth takes effort now.  The public doesn't want to put forth effort to access truth.  It's too easy to swipe your finger across headlines. Thus, we live in the cycle of select information channels being the sole arbiters of truth.  Those channels are interested in revenue, in eyeballs on screens.  But those channels are now discredited after endless propaganda.  The elites lecture you and then do the very thing they told you not to do.

Yes dear reader, this point in our history is one of weltschmerz.  We've not hit maximum disillusionment and demoralization.  That lies ahead.  We do have choices, however.  We first must understand those choices and learn about them.   Knowledge takes work.  Knowledge can't be a sound bite, a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram post.  Knowledge takes more than swiping your finger across a headline on your cell phone.  I'm hopeful that decentralizing societal functions can offer choices that are becoming more limited every day.

Gain the knowledge and liberate America, and eventually the world from its state of weltschmerz.