WHAT IF?

Suspicion is like a growing and disgusting mental boil  in a relationship. The suspicious person tries to rationalize it away, but when the slightest evidence supports the suspicion, the boil grows and becomes irritated. The only way to cure that boil of suspicion is to lance it and expose it to the bright light of truth.

Many of us have developed a boil of suspicion in our relationship to our governments in the wake of the recent viral pandemic. It hasn't bothered us terribly while we busily adapted to the crash of our comfortable American way of life. After all, when you have to wonder if there will be enough food to buy in the stores, or basic hygiene supplies, politics fade into the background.

Now that we are surfacing from the media panic and subsequent self-limitations we have succumbed to out of a sense of civic responsibility or fear of being arrested, that boil of suspicion becomes itchier and nastier. This has motivated some to take to the streets in demonstrations, immediately demonized in the same media that has aspired to control us, even before the pandemic. You know who you are.

I deal with suspicion by indulging it in throwing questions into the air. This approach is more like applying hydrocortisone cream to the boil, rather than immediately cutting it open. If the suspicion becomes more noxious in response, the it's time for the scalpel. Mine is the "what if" method, as follows:

What if the recent pandemic was indeed a biotech attack by a foreign power on The West?

What is the Wuhan "accident" wasn't an accident?

What if those at high levels of government on The Left saw the pandemic as an opportunity?

What if the governmental response to the pandemic in The West was a form of drill or experiment?

What if the public was tested for compliance to a total shutdown of a country or martial law?

What if the mainstream media were being tested on how pliable they would be in a governmental crisis?

What if managing the crisis becomes a precursor for nationalizing the US healthcare system?

What if, on the other hand, the manufactured hospital crisis was meant to deflate any enthusiasm for nationalized health care by reinforcing the image of medical providers as heroes, rather than highly paid workers?

What if the crisis management becomes chronic, meaning an institutionalizing increase in authoritarian governments?

What if there are generally positive after effects in the daily life of some segments of American society due to the shutdown and increased enforcement of civility?

What if the management of this pandemic ends up limiting herd immunity and strengthening the virus? What then?

What if the message that we are all fragile and vulnerable to a simple fact of life (disease) fosters an increased cultural regression and decline by undermining the development of true grit under stress?

Feel free to practice this method. I find it comes readily to an active mind. Conspiracy theorists are those who become convinced of their own answers to similar questions without being patient enough to observe, investigate and confirm over time. It is tempting but should be avoided. The truth eventually reveals itself to the observant and patient.