(LifeSiteNews) — It’s almost the end of 2021, and that means it’s time to look at where we came from and where we’re going.
Bill Gates has done that in an extensive blog post published December 7. It reads like one of those New Year’s letters a distant relative always writes, listing all of the things they’ve accomplished over the past year.
The blog post begins with a brief recap of Gates’ life in 2020 and 2021 — by his telling, it’s a bizarre existence no doubt alien to those who were skeptical of the COVID narrative from the beginning, but certainly familiar to many others: a life without social interaction, lived almost exclusively through a screen, only leaving the house to wander around the backyard. Vaccination opened the door to social interactions, but only small ones, and all according to CDC guidance, of course.
“It’s been a strange and disorienting experience,” Gates said. “My personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last 12 months.”
Personally, I have my doubts that Mr. Gates lived that way. With California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and President Joe Biden among the many COVID cultists caught breaking their own draconian mandates throughout this so-called “crisis,” I’m dubious whenever the elites suggest they lived like “we” did, subject to all the whims and caprices of the public health establishment.
Regardless, Gates decries the loneliness of such a life — and then promotes the “connectedness” provided by our screens and our 24/7 news cycle (with caveats, which we’ll get to).
He goes on to lay out four major issues he has in mind as the world bids the old year adieu: “the latest progress toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic, why decreased trust in institutions might be the biggest obstacle standing in our way, what the climate conversation can teach us about making progress, and how the rapid digitization brought on by the pandemic will shape our future.”
The pandemic is ending … maybe
Gates starts with airy optimism, suggesting we will (maybe) be (mostly) done with the (“acute”) phase of two-weeks-to-slow-the-spread by sometime in mid-2022. Well, that’s a relief. He said it’s taking longer because he didn’t realize how hard it would be “to convince people to take the vaccine and continue to use masks.” Of course, that’s an easy problem to solve, as our leaders have discovered: just threaten people’s livelihoods and participation in society, maybe throw in some massive fines and the suggestion of jail time (like in Austria), and you’ll be amazed at the high uptake of both experimental drugs and masks.
Moving on, Gates gets less optimistic, suggesting, “There’s no question that the Omicron variant is concerning,” regardless of the fact that the South African doctor who first identified it has expressed “stunned” surprise about the global hysteria surrounding its appearance, and says it causes only “very mild” symptoms.
We’ll need to stay tuned, though, to find out how the approved public health experts want us to respond to this new threat, whose name makes me think of something from a Spiderman movie.
I’ve got no inside knowledge, but I think I can make a prediction: It will involve you giving up more of your rights and taking more injections you don’t want.
Indeed, Gates says as much, suggesting that soon we’ll no longer have to keep COVID at the forefront of our minds before we go to soccer games, movie theaters, or work in an office (he’s apparently unaware that millions have already ditched any anxiety about the virus without Gates’ blessing and have been living their lives as normal for almost two years), because we’ll get inoculated against COVID in an annual jab along with our flu shot.
An annual COVID jab.
Those conspiracy theorists who warned the shots weren’t a once-and-done were clearly prophetic, or at least had common sense. In an excellent essay date December 9, Julius Ruechel pointed out that just like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Stitchfix, and dozens of other highly profitable companies, Big Pharma and Big Government wanted a subscription plan, and they secured a lucrative deal with COVID-19. Whether governments actually created the virus through gain of function research in Wuhan, China (and the circumstantial evidence is strong), or whether they simply capitalized on the bug’s existence to create a years-long panic campaign, the result is the same, and it’s an icky business model: create the problem, then sell the solution.
Adding that we can now look forward to more mRNA jabs developed “super-fast” moving forward, Gates also points to mask mandates, quarantines, and travel restrictions as “cheap” and “easy” tools that governments can readily deploy in the “next” crisis.
But for Gates, his cheery optimism about a future full of mandates and mRNA injections is dashed when he thinks about the fact that too many people (for some reason) don’t trust big government with their welfare anymore.
People don’t trust overreaching governments: Censorship is the obvious solution
“The pandemic has been a massive test of governance,” Gates says.
He adds that the “end” of the pandemic (no one has yet defined when we can say this boondoggle is finally over) “will be a tribute to the power of global cooperation and innovation.”
“At the same time, this era has shown us how declining trust in public institutions is creating tangible problems and complicating our efforts to respond to challenges,” he grumbles. “Based on what I’ve seen over the last couple of years, I’m more worried than I’ve ever been about the ability of governments to get big things done.”
Truly, the biggest worry, as Australia concentrates people in camps, Austria plans to imprison people for not getting the experimental shots, and Germany shuts the unclean unvaxxed from public life, is that world governments don’t have enough power. It’s deeply troubling, indeed, that governments can’t just do whatever they feel is necessary, in terms of the “climate,” or “pandemics,” or any other “crisis,” because people just don’t trust unaccountable bureaucrats trying to micromanage their existence anymore. What’s the world coming to?
Anyway, Gates is worried. “If your people don’t trust you, they’re not going to support major new initiatives,” he muses.
One way to tackle this growing distrust, of course, is to stifle communication. In 2020 and 2021, people started talking. They lost their rights, their way of life, and their social connections. They went online to talk about it, and were oftentimes banned, censored, and shut down. But it’s not enough. More censorship is clearly warranted here. All these opinions from ordinary people, unvetted by government lackeys, combined with a pernicious desire for self-government, all seem like a major threat to “our democracy,” don’t they?
One wonders if some of this is a sore spot with Gates, who is frustrated about lower vaccine uptake due to “disinformation” (the scarier version of the old phrase “misinformation:” swapping out the “m” for a “d” evokes images of Russian meddling, it seems, even though that whole mess turned out to be a Democrat hoax).
Gates specifically decries “conspiracy theories that unfortunately involve me,” which apparently encourage fewer people to get an experimental shot that has been implicated in hundreds of thousands of serious adverse reactions to protect against a virus with a 99.5% survivability rate among those under 50.
“[W]hy couldn’t our government create new rules to protect them from the most tangible harms created by social media?” Gates wonders.
He argues that a video that “falsely” claims the abortion-tainted COVID jabs cause infertility — former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon has argued they may; meanwhile, the overall safety of the shots is a mystery since they’re not due to finish up clinical trials until 2023 — “should not be allowed to spread widely under the guise of being news.”
Indeed, infertility caused by the jabs shouldn’t be allowed to be shared as news. Just like the “lab-leak theory,” or Hunter Biden’s laptop, which were stifled by “fact-checkers” until it became impossible to conceal, or politically expedient to admit, that they were true all along.
The climate is warming, or changing, or something …
More good news: Gates is optimistic that we might just skirt a climate disaster.
Gates’ third bullet-point in his lengthy New Year letter is about climate change. Unsurprisingly, he thinks that if we keep heading toward a progressive utopian vision of global “collaboration” (read: top-down control by a handful of global elites), the planet may not explode. That’s refreshing.
There’s nothing much new in Gates’ section about the climate, except that the computer programmer-turned-public-health-expert and global-governance-guru is confident that decarbonization, upping the cost of fuel, and hitting “net zero” emissions (a goal that sounds as likely as “COVID-zero,” an obsessive pipedream that has led to some of the most brutal and authoritarian “public health” measures in the world), could help the planet avoid a 2-degree-farenheit apocalypse in the next few decades.
We can all sleep better at night.
The new reality is virtual reality
Finally, Gates wants us to know that “Digitization is here to stay.”
He notes that pandemic-era changes like ordering groceries online and moving to Zoom conferences instead of meeting with people in the real world could be just “the tip of the iceberg,” with 2022 launching us into a world of decreased human interaction and increased virtual involvement in a world whose limits are pre-programmed by leftist Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
Indeed, why go back to normal when our lives could be even more fragmented and digital than they were in 2020/2021? Why not increase the divisions and live more than ever in a digital space programmed by a secular materialist elite class?
Some of us anticipated this shift as far back as last year, wondering whether the extreme and clearly unhinged response to COVID was actually a plot to force a revolutionary shift into an increasingly virtual world that may have faced more pushback if people weren’t practically required to participate in it.
Gates imagines a world in which a separate screen set up in our homes can allow us to see our colleagues working in real time, giving a surveillance window into everybody’s living spaces as if that’s somehow desirable.
More than that, we could switch to the Metaverse and hold our work meetings in virtual reality, where our social interactions could be facilitated through programmed virtual spaces in which we are not ourselves, but avatars. (As a side note, I think the transgender revolution has more to do with this than it has to do with sexuality as such — in the Metaverse, you can be a man, a woman, an elephant, or a dragon. Reality is what you want it to be, or, rather, what Mark Zuckerberg makes it).
“The idea is that you will eventually use your avatar to meet with people in a virtual space that replicates the feeling of being in an actual room with them,” Gates says. “To do this, you’ll need something like VR goggles and motion capture gloves to accurately capture your expressions, body language, and the quality of your voice.”
Gates goes on to discuss the absorption of education and healthcare into this increasingly de-personalized world he envisions, in which teachers can merely use a “button click” to see how students are doing, rather than do that difficult work of, you know, actually getting to know them as people.
In healthcare, a shift to Telehealth seen over the course of the pandemic has given Mr. Gates optimism for a continuing move toward dehumanization, in which there’s no need to be physically in the same room with your healthcare provider. Instead, you can have all the tools you need at home to draw blood, take your vitals, etc. In this world, presumably, you will get your restorative treatments the way a computer gets a software update.
I don’t know why anybody who has ever been outdoors, felt the sand between their toes at the beach, watched a sunrise, played with a dog, hiked a mountain trail, or hugged their family members, would desire this kind of virtual reality. But I do think that it wouldn’t have been possible without forcing people into their homes, terrifying them about the very air they breathe, teaching them to view other human beings as germ factories, and infusing paranoia about the supposedly fragile climate.
2022 and the ‘new normal’
The final takeaway is that Bill Gates is optimistic. For those of us whose views of the world tend to differ from Gates, whose neo-colonialist philanthropies have devastated families, farms, and freedoms throughout the world, that optimism is not very heartening.
He likes to think of the “new normal” of 2022 and beyond, in which “green” climate schemes overtake innovation, social interaction becomes more digital, communication is more censored, global governments “collaborate” to wield more power, and you get injected with mRNA jabs at least once a year.
“The world has adapted to big disruptions before, and we’ll do it again,” he says.
For once, I agree with him.
The world does adapt to big disruptions, sometimes in healthy ways and sometimes in negative ways. The ways he suggests, I posit, will lead human beings with eternal souls further down the path of fragmentation, materialism, depression, suicidality, and the loss of the One True source of all Goodness for Whom we are made and with Whom we are intended to spend eternity: Our loving God Who knows us personally, Who cares for us, and Who became man and died on the cross that we might not die but have eternal life.
Bill Gates suggests a truly terrifying path. I suggest a different way.
‘If you want to change the world, go home and love your family’
This quote by Mother Teresa has always struck me as profound. In a world of increasing globalization, in which sadly even the Catholic Church has focused on a kind of obsessive “do-goodism,” we often feel we must reach out to the far corners of the earth to make things better. Whether you think that means vaccinating African children or if you think that means toppling the plutocrats in the U.N., I think both are ultimately misguided in the long run.
The answer is not global: It’s local.
If Gates wants us to partake in the inhuman Metaverse, I suggest we try to spend less time even on our phones or laptops. Go to Mass and adoration. Start a garden. Meet your neighbors. Go for walks. Spend time with your families. Learn to play an instrument. Read a real book.
If Gates thinks the government should censor us, become stronger in your views and less afraid to state them, not just online but in real life too. Join rallies against vaccine mandates and lockdowns. Go to the March for Life if you can. Have good-faith debates with whoever is willing to talk to you.
If Gates wants life to be controlled by elites and technocrats in global governments, pharmaceutical companies, and social media corporations, take your life back yourself. Look into home remedies for common ailments. Start a side business. Work with your hands. If you have the ability and interest, run for local office and take back political power at the local level.
We have reason to be optimistic. More than ever, people are finding out what truly matters in life, and digging in. We’re showing up to school board meetings, we’re taking to the streets to peacefully protest, and we’re living our faith more thoroughly because we remember when the Mass was abruptly taken away from us.
We need to keep it up, and do more.
I give this advice to myself as much as to anybody else. The truth is it’s not easy. As someone born just as the Millennial generation was ending and Generation Z was beginning, modern technology is second nature. It’s far easier, more comfortable, and more convenient to live a life filled with the conveniences of high-speed internet, and it has never been easier to watch YouTube videos rather than go meet up with friends.
But the challenge I make to myself and others, as we embark upon 2022, is to live. To truly live as God intended us to. To take risks, refuse to apologize for the things we know are right, and put our humanity above our conveniences.
And, finally, we ought to give Bill Gates ever more reason to fear that the greatest threat to his optimism is our optimism.
Bill Gates should be very worried indeed that people no longer trust him and the massive overreaching and godless global institutions he promotes. That we have found out what really matters, and we’re willing to fight for it.
