Investigating Vandalism in the Valley
Week 8 of the Quarantine
Oh Death,
Whoa, death!
Won’t you spare me over ‘til another year?
Well, what is this, that I can’t see?
With ice-cold hands taking hold of me
Well, I am death none can excel
I’ll open the door to heaven or hell
Whoa, Death, someone would pray
Could you wait to call me another day?
– Lloyd Chandler
GUALFIN, ARGENTINA – We are up at the ranch, waiting for the police.
We hope they come soon. It’s a four- or five-hour ride just to get to the scene of the crime – where the “originarios” burned down our cabins, wrecked our corral, and stole our “sepo.”
Waiting for the police to arrive… and the sun to rise…
It’s another two or three hours out to where we think the stolen property was taken. Our gaucho, Samuel, has been up there for the last four days looking for it. He was told to stay in the valley until the police turn up.
Samuel is a tough hombre. Now that our cabins have been burnt, there’s no shelter in the valley. The sun beats down by day… and at night, the temperature falls well below zero (centigrade).
And it’s a huge valley. If the thieves took precautions, they might have hidden the sepo where we can’t find it. We’ll see…
Disaster!
An hour later…
Uh oh… here are the police. What a disaster! Coming up this morning, before dawn, they ran into one of our bulls.
The police car came off the worst against one of our bulls…
We’ll ride out later to see if the bull is still alive. They said it “ran off.”
And now, we’re in our office with the police, waiting to see what will happen next. They are sitting in front of us as we write…
After spending time on WhatsApp with their superiors, the police decided on the obvious course of action. They will continue their mission, riding up to the high pasture. We’ll drive them back to Molinos tonight (their truck is out of commission).
The decisions finally taken, we all went outside to the waiting horses. It was then that we discovered that the police were totally unprepared for the job ahead.
They are used to squad cars, not horses. Two of the three of them could not get up by themselves. They had to be pushed up. Once in the saddle, they looked as though they might fall off at any moment. One had never been on a horse before. And they were setting off on a rough, 12-hour ride.
“This is going to be a long day,” we said to our foreman as they set off. We were supposed to go with them, but with all three policemen mounted up, along with our three ranch hands, we had no more horses available.
Stay tuned…
First Wave
In the meantime, we’re wondering about the extraordinary goings on north of the Rio Grande.
Here in the Diary, it is not our business to look for crime or sin. We keep our eyes on the money. But Americans are now suffering the biggest financial loss in their history; it might be worth taking a closer look at what caused it.
Onto the scene in late 2019 came a novel virus. To America’s baby boomers and geriatrics, it appeared like a Biblical Scourge. It seemed designed – not by Chinese scientists, but by God Himself – to target them specifically (the old, fat, diabetic, and otherwise impaired by age and bad habits) with a death rate that is more than 100 times greater than the death rate for people under 29.
Naturally, we kept our distance. We took refuge in our houses. We raised our drawbridges and barred our doors. And we prayed to the authorities – Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Jerome Powell – for succor.
But that is only the First Wave.
Second Wave
The first wave may take our lives; the second tortures, torments, and twists them into grotesque new shapes. Bars are closed, as are shops… offices… airlines… restaurants… beaches… parks. And the feds have brought down upon us calamity never before seen in history: an intentional, self-inflicted depression.
Instead of spending a few billion dollars to secure nursing homes and retirement communities, they came up with the Universal Lockdown. That is, instead of protecting the vulnerable, they put everyone under house arrest. As we will see, this was…
Bad medicine… treating healthy 20-year-olds as though they were octogenarians…
Bad epidemiology… “flattening the curve” may result in more deaths, not fewer…
Bad law… pretending that a virus gives the politicians the authority to put millions of people under house arrest…
Bad morals… making the young pay to protect the old…
Bad math… failing to add up the real costs, in time and money, of the lockdown order…
Bad government… using a crisis to extend and expand the corrupt reach of political power…
Fear of Death
But it is worse than that. Worse than a mistake… Worse than a crime…
It is a sin… an offense against our gods and ourselves… a fear of death so unnatural and so cowardly, it causes us to act like damned fools.
Led by the press, the politicians, and the elites…
…some who wanted more power…
…some who wanted more money…
…some who use the virus to cover up the mess they had made of the economy…
…some who wanted to punish Donald Trump…
…and some who were just bamboozled by the “experts”…
…we have turned our backs on the very thing that makes us human and that has made our species so successful.
The children prayed, the preacher preached
Time and mercy is out of your reach
I’ll fix your feet ‘til you can’t walk
I’ll lock your jaw ‘til you can’t talk
I’ll close your eyes so you can’t see
This very hour, come and go with me
We’re all going with Death sooner or later. The question is when… and how?
More to come…
Regards,
Bill