“I Think You've All Lost Your Minds”
by Brian Maher
"This weekend we really flustered the fish… and fluttered the dovecotes… That is because we argued that Vladimir Putin merited the Nobel Prize. Can you imagine it - Vladimir Putin - for the Nobel Prize? As well nominate Dr. Fauci for Physician of the Year. Who outside the devil could suggest it? Only a fellow as malicious and vicious as your editor could suggest it.
Our moral abominations excited reader Mary into a state of furious incandescence. She dealt with us this way: "I have an employee who is Ukrainian and in touch with her suffering relatives over there. Your sympathy is for the uber-rich oligarchs… and not for the people of a democracy who have been in need of our help for the past 20 years to maintain that democracy… Putin doesn't deserve any positive recognition… He sure as hell does not deserve any kind of prize, particularly the Nobel PEACE Prize!!
This ability of yours to compartmentalize the moral and immoral behavior of an obviously bad person with selfish aims and evil intent explains your support of Donald Trump and the Marjorie Greenes of the world. Your obsession with far-right politics and money has caused you to lose your sense of right and wrong. I think you've all lost your minds to even put that nomination in print."
The Side of the Angels: We appreciate vastly Mary’s principled ferocity. Love us or hate us, we say - but spare us your indifference. Mary has spared us her indifference. And we have no doubt: Mary is with the angels. Yet our stone heart is actually with Mary’s Ukrainian employee. It is also with her desperate and forlorn Ukrainian relatives, presently withering beneath Mr. Putin’s atrocities.
As we argued last week: "Let the record reflect it at once - we are not with the Russian strongman. Ukrainian blood - and Russian blood - will forever stain his hands. He cannot rinse it away."
We repeated our denunciation of Mr. Putin’s “special military operation” in this weekend’s Reckoning. We are not certain Mary listened. We suspect she glanced the title – “Putin Deserves the Nobel Prize” - and ran away. If Mary read on she would have understood we did not nominate Mr. Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize. We nominated - wryly and jestingly - Mr. Putin for the Nobel Prize in medicine. The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine is not the Nobel Peace Prize. Mary failed to appreciate the jest.
Anti-Partisan: Yet let us concede it now: Your editor is a sort of rascal, though generally harmless… Moral panics, frenzies and manias fail to stir him. He yanks on legs and pulls on noses - particularly those of the pious and the righteous. He places tacks on chairs and dips ponytails in inkwells. He activates hallway fire alarms. He razzes. Let it also enter the record: This publication has not supported “Donald Trump and the Marjorie [Taylor] Greenes of the world.”
We found the former a fantastic source of entertainment, it is true. Never has a United States president frosted so many noses or wrung so many gizzards. And we suspect strongly - we know it for a fact - we have not mentioned the latter even once in these pages. Nor do we harbor an “obsession with far-right politics.”
We harbor no obsession with politics whatsoever… save as entertainment. We attempt to skirt politics to the extent it is possible. Alas, it is not always possible. To the extent we are partisan, we are partisan for whichever side will leave us most alone. But each side, left and right, invades our peace, our dignity and our wallet to one degree or other.
But is Mary correct that we have lost our mind? We would inform Mary that a man can only lose something he previously possessed.
In Praise of Division: Days earlier reader Tim denounced us for fomenting “division”: "Rethink your misguided current course of action as now more than ever we need unity, not division." Yet we would inform Tim that unity is not our concern. In point of fact, unity generally alarms us. Unity is often the warrant for all manner of political evil - war, to name one example. Pandemic-induced “lockdowns” and censorship of dissent to name two more.
The Daily Reckoning grazes against the grain of consensus, by its nature. If it is unity Tim seeks, we would direct him elsewhere. He will not find it here. It is the wrong address. But to proceed…
Again, Putin for the Nobel Prize: We merely argued this weekend that Mr. Putin’s latest buccaneering has ended the pandemic. Hence his nomination for the Nobel Prize in medicine: "The coronavirus has menaced us for two years. We have endured vicious home imprisonments, grave economic privations, government ruthlessness and all species of associated miseries. None of it has leashed the virus. Nor have the vaccines - which is now obvious to any with eyes able to see and willing to see.
Now comes along the Russian berserker… Within the space of days, he has scotched the virus and put it to rout. He has liberated us at last from this hell-sent scourge."
In support of our nomination we cited economist Martin Armstrong. From whom: "The joke running around is that Putin should be nominated for the 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine for he cured COVID-19 in 48 hours – something nobody else has been able to do in three years. Just hours before Biden’s State of the Union, he rescinded the mask requirement. So just hours before, you would get COVID if you did not have a mask. Thanks to Putin, suddenly Congress could actually meet without masks. That is something nobody else could have done in a matter of hours."
Clemency for Putin: And has Dr. Fauci put in a single television appearance since this latest rumpus commenced? To our knowledge he has not… though we will take correction if mistaken. The doctor’s recent vanishing nearly tempts us to absolve Mr. Putin of his grave, grave sins against peace. We cannot do it of course. Yet we might counsel some slight clemency when The Hague convicts him of crimes against humanity. Rather than 89 consecutive life sentences, we might reduce it to 81. Perhaps even 66 if we are in generous spirits come the time.
If Dr. Fauci vanishes forever - may the Lord forgive us - we may even be amenable to a full and unconditional pardon…"
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