There is a beast out there. It has been prowling the planet for hundreds of years. It is more fearsome than any creature that stalked the nightmares of Bram Stoker, Steven King, or Hollywood’s kings of horror. In its teeth are the entrails of crushed lives, broken dreams, and the deaths of millions. It has destroyed entire cities. It has turned millions into wide-eyed stumbling zombies wandering about life in a never-ending search for something to consume. As horrifying as it is today, the carnage will get worse if it is not slain. Like a shark, it never stops moving and not just to feed. The feeding merely fuels its search for new ways to debilitate and destroy. Every day it adds new tentacles, new teeth, and macabre new abilities to become a more efficient machine of destruction and to grow ever larger. By far, its greatest survival adaptation is its ability to camouflage itself.  Were it ever recognized for its true nature, the beast would not survive yet it continues to walk among us. Amazingly, it is invisible to millions thanks to its incredible power to deceive. The beast is liberalism. You may call it progressivism, collectivism or socialism. They are all just different names for the same beast. A system in which the productive have the fruits of their labors confiscated to pay for the unproductive at the same time funding regulation of everything at the whim of the ruling class elites. While they live their lives safely outside of the “systems” they build, they know what is best for you. Just trust them. It is the great destroyer of spirit, of freedom, and of life itself. All of this a bit over the top, you say? Let’s take a look.

Let’s start with the deaths of millions. Looking back, the beast was still fairly small in the fall of 1962. It was, however, about to sprout a major tentacle and begin one of its earliest and most deadly acts of destruction. It was then that the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published. The book drew a connection between the misuse of the pesticide DDT and the size and composition of the eggs of some raptors. DDT was and is the most (and maybe the only) effective way to combat the spread of malaria. Prior to the use of DDT, malaria afflicted roughly 7 million Americans each year, killing thousands. One estimate makes the claim that half the people who have ever lived on Earth have died of malaria. But never mind all that; some raptor eggs had thinner shells. Using the peacock feathers of NBC to attract attention, the unblinking eye of CBS to hypnotize, and speaking in the captivating voice of the Grey Lady of New York the beast convinced us that we were “destroying the environment.” Government must act on our behalf. The use of pesticides, DDT in particular, must be banned they said.   After much liberal science-bending and media manipulation, DDT was finally banned in 1972. Since that September day 50 million people have died of malaria. Fifty. Million. Most of those were in poor undeveloped countries and most were children. 2700 people will die today of malaria, 2700 tomorrow, and 2700 every day for the foreseeable future. Most of those will be children and all of them would have the ability to avoid malaria with 90% efficiency were it not for the unavailability of DDT. In retrospect, it is clear that Ms. Carson’s claims were hysteria, not science. There are numerous books and articles in which her book is totally debunked but the beast still has many under its spell 50 years later. Even if her claims were true, on the scales of relative worth, should more weight be given to 50 million human lives or to a slightly reduced reproductive rate of raptors?

This particular tentacle of the beast has continued to grow over the years and is now one of its most powerful weapons. In 2005, again in the name of the environment, it was mandated that all U.S. gasolines be supplemented with ethanol. Not suggested. Not incentivized. Mandated. Ethanol is based on corn which is one of the most basic and pervasive food sources on the planet.The mad scramble for the corn-based alcohol product sent food prices soaring worldwide leading to massive increases in the number of those who could not afford or even grow food. Food riots struck the third world. There were tortilla riots in Mexico. Children were starving in Guatemala and tens of thousands Ugandans were burned out of their homes so that land could be dedicated to the god of “green.” The spread of starvation and the worldwide land grab continues to this day. In a cruel ironic twist it now turns out that the production of ethanol is actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels. The beast had again destroyed or ended thousands of lives in the name of a non-existent global warming crisis fed to the masses with the hypnotic powers of the media and once again the science was phony. Tens of thousands of green zombies now roam the U.S. and Europe with blank stares droning buzz words like “climate change” and “carbon footprint” over and over again, not having any idea what they are talking about. The phony science model has now been totally wrong for longer (16 years) than it was ever right. But no matter. It’s what the beast’s hypnosis has them believing. Meanwhile people starve and die.

At this point you could be forgiven for thinking that, except for the higher food and gas prices, those are third world effects. True enough, but all you need to do is take a look at Detroit to see how the beast has ravaged an entire city right here in the U.S..  Detroit was, in its heyday one of the finest cities in the world. It was home to the U.S auto industry which was the envy of the world and was a flourishing, vibrant place to live. Today it’s a war zone. In many places it could be mistaken for a bombed out post World War II European city. The number of murders last year (386) was the same as in 2000 even though 200,000 people have fled. The violent crime rate is 2123 for every 100,000 residents. People “joke” that you can get a pizza delivered quicker than you can get a police car. Some joke. Over 40% of the citizens of Detroit cannot read. There are serious discussions about bulldozing large areas of the city so that water, sewer, police, and fire services can be withdrawn to save money. The city is bankrupt, broken, and lawless. So, how did this happen? It’s really not a mystery. Today’s Detroit is the ultimate natural outcome of decades spent under the control of the beast.

The once flourishing auto industry was slowly done in by the million paper cuts of union wage extortion made possible by the self-serving circle of the union-Democrat alliance. The tax and spend philosophy worked as a double-edged sword of destruction. In order for the government to “take care” of literally everyone they had to create more and more government programs. These required more and more taxes which created the incentive for businesses to leave.
They did in large numbers. It also created incentives for those of a certain mindset to game the system rather than work. They did, again, in large numbers. Each of these fed off the other; more people taking from the system required higher taxes which led to more businesses leaving which led to more people needing assistance which led to….. well you get the idea. The normal insulator to social upheaval, the family, was crushed as fathers were replaced with government checks. All the while government grew like a cancer, slowly consuming more and more of the city’s economic lifeblood. This outcome points out the basic flaw of the beast’s hypnotic message. If ever examined in the bright light, it becomes clear that whatever the state provides is done with money taken from someone else. No matter how you slice it, this is always a net negative for the economy. The money that is taken from the productive is always put back into the economy somewhere else at less than 100% of the original amount as originally discussed here: https://chronicleofchange.com/?p=497. When the scales finally tip to the point where there are more people on the wagon than are pulling the wagon, the producers flee. When there are few enough producers left that most businesses and citizens would not want to live there the “death spiral” begins. Detroit is but the best example of a long list of failures which includes many other cities such as Oakland as well as entire states such as Illinois, New Jersey, and California.

These are but a few examples of the failures of that which is created by the beast. Under close examination almost every single thing done in its name has done harm. Beast controlled zombies may offer up an example such as Social Security as an exception to the rule of big government failure. After all, it takes care of so many of our elderly. It would be cruel for our elderly to not have such a program. Shining a little light on the subject, however, shows us that, if those seniors had been given the opportunity to opt out and invest their money in even something as safe and mundane as T-bills, they would have double the retirement funds they currently get back from the beast. Even as an inefficient lifelong theft program, Social Security is in deep trouble to the point where future retirees may get nothing at all. Medicare, the Post Office, Amtrak, Cash for Clunkers, food stamps, Obamaphones, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy would all appear on the list of beast programs which have completely failed or had harmful unintended consequences. A complete list would require hours of typing.

This is a critical moment for us in the United States as the harmful effects of the beast become more and more visible by the day. With each episode of the evening news we see the beast attempt to sprout its newest tentacle. This would be the most powerful of all of its weapons. It would have powers over life and death greater than all of its previous metastases. The beast now wants control of your healthcare.

If not stopped now, what was once the greatest country on Earth will be just a “location” for the epic horror movie of all time and we will all have a part.