Losing it

Dementia is all the rage at the moment: "Is President Trump losing it?" ask those in the New Normal New York Times New World Order camp....but in doing so, they give away the rage they feel.

Generally speaking, the phrase 'Losing it' has two meanings in English: Losing your grip on reality, and losing your temper. We live in a bizarre world now where bad tempered, bad losers with little or no grip on reality hurl accusations of dementia at any old person promoting a return to empirical science.

For myself, I often lose my temper about mundane stuff, because I urge complaint not compliance when it comes to Woke drivel. But at the moment, I have someone very close to me who is losing it in the form of dementia....and it's giving me a cystal-clear perspective about the importance of empathy.

In a nutshell, rigid ideology reduces the importance of care for the citizen, whereas an open mind seeks to do whatever it takes to relieve his or her pain.

My brother Michael has struggled badly over the last five years with Alzheimers-related dementia. My sister-in-law - easily the best thing that ever happened to him - has shown astonishing love for and loyalty to my elder sibling over that period. But now Michael has gone rapidly downhill, and the NHS is unable to tackle his dehydration because he can't tolerate a drip-feed.

Accordingly, the hospital doctors are reducing the pain of his inevitable death with intravenous injections of morphine.

It is a scientific fact that Homo sapiens can go up to three months without food, but only about a week without either food or water. 

So my brother is about to die, but dedicated medical professionals are putting his painless passing before any brainless budgetary considerations set by bureaucrats answerable to nobody.

However, unless we in The Resistance hold the State technocrats and Big Pharma genocidal nutters to account, such socio-cultural morality will wither on the vine.

As the Buddhists say, "Everything is connected". Toleration of small abuses is the fast lane to slavery.

But there is also a third meaning of 'losing it' which, in the 21st century, has come to mean a combo of government over-spenders, central bankers and greedy billionaires variously stealing, devaluing and digitalising such monies as you might have earned during this material life....until you're in danger of losing it - and having only one means of access to it: via a smartphone.

I could do a lot worse than simply quoting what the FT's CBDC expert Andy Haldane has to say [my bold emphases]:

'Cash is much more than a payments technology. It is one of the purest and oldest forms of public good, a symbol of identity and sovereignty. Choices about this public good are, ultimately and rightly, ones for citizens rather than central bankers or cryptographers. They are social, not technological, choices — and sometimes emotional ones. And the social issues raised by CBDCs are without question real. This includes concerns about the privacy of the currency and about retaining access to cash for those who neither want nor can access CBDC'.

I live now - and will end my days in - a West African economy which is 98.7% cash oriented: very, very few retail, property, automobile, tourism hospitality or rental payments accept debit cards or standing orders.

At times, this can be frustrating for a First World white man. But I'm here to tell you, cash privacy (and charitable donations through that medium) keep the sociopathic tax collector at arms length.....and that is to the benefit of the vast majority here living from hand to mouth; further, once access to your own money is only given via a Smartphone - and this is already happening via Africell and Qcell here in Gambia - we all know how those who control the switchgear can make your life a serial misery of stress. Constant updates create confused navigation - but above all, the Bot lie 'Incorrect Password' has become a way of censoring one's opinion: applying that to personal savings access would create a dystopian horror show of control being exercised by an AI form devoid of right-brain compassion.

Unfettered access to one's own hard-earned money is the best guarantee of continued liberty for those electorates increasingly reviled and ignored by unrepresentative technocrats.

This is an existential fight that we must not lose. If we do so, our grandchildren will never forgive us.