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“Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!”

“Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!”

Last updated on: February 20, 2021 at 4:36 pm by Dan Peterson

“Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” 2021-02-20T16:36:21-07:00 Dan Peterson

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I don’t know who created this image, which I came across months back and which is obviously aimed at the sorts of folks who (for reasons entirely obscure to me) imagine Bill Gates to be responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and who like to think of the refusal to wear masks as some sort of patriotic statement. I hope that he or she will forgive my borrowing it for use here.

First, though:

“Witnesses Movie Interview and Special Screening”

Book of Moses Essays #43: Moses 1: A Literary Masterpiece. Many-Great Waters and Moses’ Mission to Baptize (Moses 1:25-26)

***

“Bill Gates is investing big in American farmland: The Microsoft co-founder’s personal investments mirror a growing trend amongst the uber-wealthy.”

“Farmland offers an excellent means to diversify a tech-heavy portfolio,” O’Keefe told Crosscut. “It’s a sound counterbalance with proven rates of return. In addition, given the scale of Bill Gates’s investments, he has ample opportunity to build a team of superior agricultural managers, which is precisely what one sees at Gates’ farmland firm, Cottonwood Ag Management.”

But why, you might wonder, was I reading an article about investments in agricultural land?

Well, I came across it in a link from a Facebook piece that revealed the real reasons behind Bill Gates’s acquisition of farm properties — because, of course, nobody ever actually seeks to diversify an investment portfolio, or to achieve reliable returns, or to create efficiencies of scale.

It turns out, according to that Facebook entry, that Mr. Gates is buying up farmland in order to remove it from production. His goal is to reduce the world’s population by approximately two thirds though a combination of famine and viruses, aided by gun control. (More on his viral strategy in just a moment.). His strategy is communist-inspired, and his model is Joseph Stalin’s infamous 1932-1933 Ukrainian terror-famine, the Holodomor (Голодомо́р).

As for Bill Gates and pushing human extinction via virus, it appears — I also learned this on Facebook, though whether it was in an entry from the same person or not I cannot now recall — that the coronavirus was developed jointly by Mr. Gates and Anthony Fauci in order to destroy basic human freedoms and subject all of us to government (meaning their) control. The virus is obviously a hoax, though — no worse than, and indeed not fundamentally different from, the common cold. Which got me to me wondering, since humanity has known the common cold for millennia, what was really left for Mr. Gates and Dr. Fauci to create. And why? How exactly would a cold-like virus, no more lethal than a mild flu, serve to destroy constitutional liberties and reduce us to serfs under the rule of Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci?

These are mysteries, and I don’t pretend to understand them.

Nonetheless, my wife and I are now scheduled to receive our first anti-COVID vaccination on Monday — whether Pfizer or Moderna I don’t yet know — and I’m making some preparations for the event.

One of my favorite annual rituals, when my wife and I lived in Egypt, was to go to the Cairo International Book Fair at the end of January or the beginning of February, Various publishing companies and countries would mount large displays there, with books at reduced prices in Arabic, English, and various other languages. It was wonderful. One of my favorite exhibits, though, was that of North Korea. Every year, while — unlike every other booth and pavilion — they had no books for sale, they always had one elegant set of the collected works of the then-reigning member of the Kim family (then still Kim Il-sung) reverently displayed on a flower-decorated table before a large portrait the Dear Leader.

Inspired by that memory, I’m beginning to create my personal shrine to Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci as, I understand, is expected of those who’ve been vaccinated. But I have some questions, and perhaps some of you out there can help me:

Is it important that the photos of Dr. Fauci and Mr. Gates be of the same size? Must they be in color? Should that of Mr. Gates stand in front of Dr. Fauci’s, or should it be larger and behind it?
Must the candles burning before the portraits be unscented? Having grown up in 1960s California, I’ve always liked incense. Would it be an acceptable addition if they accompanied the unscented candles?
My Russian is extremely weak. Must the liturgical chanting before the images use that language? My German is far better. Would recitations from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital be an adequate substitute?
How many times per week is it required to burn a copy of the Bill of Rights before the images of Dr. Fauci and Mr. Gates?
And, finally, a question not about the shrine itself but about how to care for and feed the tiny alien organisms that will be injected into my arm: Do they have special dietary requirements?

Avē Caesar! Moritūrī tē salūtāmus!

Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!

***

My wife and I were very sad to see this news:

“Jerold Ottley, longtime Tabernacle Choir director, passes at age 86 from COVID-19-related illness”

We became acquainted with Dr. Ottley after the conclusion of his service with the Tabernacle Choir; he was a very pleasant man. Among other things, he appears in the Interpreter Foundation’s film about the late Tabernacle organist Robert Cundick:

“Now Available for Viewing: Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music”

***

“The pandemic isn’t over, and misinformation can still be deadly: By engaging people of faith, we’ve defeated pandemics before. We can do it again.”

“The first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is really effective: A new study from Israel suggests the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the coronavirus”

“Confirmed: The Vaccines Mitigate Transmission”

“All Kinds of Great News on COVID”

“Cases are down 77 percent in the past six weeks, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Marty Makary notes in the WSJ, “If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill.” . . . We’re breaking the back of this thing.”

But don’t give up hope: There’s still a chance, if we drop social distancing, don’t mask, and refuse vaccination, that we can keep the pandemic going indefinitely.

***

I like this piece not only for itself but because of the neat way it violates two very specific stereotypes about Latter-day Saints:

“Ex-NASA engineer watches her project land on Mars while serving Latter-day Saint mission”

“Incredible new images shared by Perseverance rover after Mars landing”

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