A brilliant lady named Joan Clarke once asked her students –when they were looking at a regular clock set at 12:45– “what time is it, according to the clock”?

Yes, a rather prosaic question. Mrs. Clarke, however, was instructing others at Bletchley Park on solving the riddle of the German Enigma code traffic machinery.

The students would seem puzzled, and then answer: “Twelve Forty-Five?”

Hmm, she would answer. “What if you were inside the clock?”

As it turns out, the point of the question is much more poetic than prosaic: What if your vantage point is all wrong? What if your predispositions color your perception? What if Up is Down, and Inside is Out?

That’s the problem with Panic: It doesn’t allow for ponderables like those proffered by Mrs. Clarke. Panic devours nuance and introspection. I’ve lived for 56 years, and I’ve yet to witness a better example of mass panic, and its societal and civic metastasis than during the past month of the Wuhan Terror. And there can now be no doubt: The panic is much, much worse than the virus. And Panic and Self Government are the Oil and Water of polity: They cannot mix.

So, now is the time –more than at any point in those same 56 years– for introspection, for reasoned thought, for eschewing the herd mentality –even as we are grasping for herd immunity. We MUST step back, and reason together.

What does the world look like from INSIDE the clock?

Well– from this vantage point, there can be little doubt. First of all: There is a culprit. A real, knowable, quantifiable fiend that has the carnage of tens of thousands of dead souls, the smoldering wreckage of a shattered world-wide economy, the destruction of millions and millions of human dreams, and the death of the aspirations of their progeny yet born on its hands; there is one —one— utterly human construct that can be blamed; and MUST be blamed for this catastrophe:

Government.

Government at all levels –local, state, national, transnational– is to blame for the Coronavirus. When you look at the world from inside the clock, you can come to this (and only this) conclusion…

For example: In my little, miniscule, small business (as is appropriate to the current narrative) here in northern Michigan, local, state, and federal authorities constantly –and I do mean constantly— harass, tax, regulate, inspect, and police even the most picayune details of what I do. The assumption in the eyes of Government is that law-abiding business aren’t noble enterprises, but renegade scofflaws that must be corralled and confined.

Even in the days before the outbreak of the Wuhan Virus, the various levels of government wanted to know: That there are five hand-wash sinks for the folks I’ve hired, and that there are signs posted to remind them to wash their hands, as if they didn’t know…

…That there are “back-flow” prevention devices on the coffee machines (lest hot water “backflow” into the water pipes), that the guys and gals all wear hair-nets and back supports. The men even have to wear beard-nets. There has to be ear and eye-protection devices available at all times…

…That there has to be one off-street parking place for each 300 square feet of production space. There have to be emergency shut-down breakers, illuminated exit signs, and electronic fire suppression at the doors. I must confiscate a certain percentage of my employees paycheck every other week to fund the government whether they accede to it or not. When they were hired, there were certain questions I could ask them, and certain ones I could not…

…The temperature of the water that comes out of the faucet to wash their hands must be a certain temperature. The sign on the building can only be a certain size, and the people who pick up some of the packages can only be of a certain union. The walls must be scrubbable, the very cove-mouldings near the floors must be a certain size, and made of vinyl.

The list could go on, and on. There are other, nearly countless tasks I’m required to perform –(ultimately by the force of arms) by all levels of Government –all in the assumption that Government can better care for the health of my associates than I , or even THEY can themselves: Thank GOODNESS the government is there to make sure there is vinyl cove, back-flow preventors, self-closing doors, beard nets and parking spaces. They are sure looking out for The Common Good!

Right? Right? Well…

No, not really: This same government is –at the same time making sure my guys wear beard nets– sending $650,000,000 US tax payer dollars to the Wuhan Virology Research Larboratory.

Why? Oh, who knows, really; probably because there is some demented group-think at the higher echelons of the transnational elites that goes something like this: We need an AIDS vaccine, because we want to prove to The Civilized World that we aren’t homophobic. They are studying certain RNA combinations in Wuhan. These studies may result someday in an AIDS vaccine. Let’s send them a bunch of money… and so on.

Thus, a rogue, genocidal regime –Communist China– is given the $650,000,000.

…and the seals on their freezers in the Wuhan Lab are broken –it turns out– and the bat-turd serum leaks on the technicians, and… well, we are all now living with the results. Governments in China took money from Governments in the US to assuage the Governments in Europe to sluice fantasy vaccines to the Governments in Africa. And on and on and on. Government, government, government…

And then we are expected to look to The Government on how to handle the mess they made with their monetary policies and their diplomatic policies and their transnational immigration, health and social policies. The Government is supposed to have the answers to the disasters they created. World-wide government is the arsonist that calls the fire department, and only wants to “help”

Really?

Nah, I don’t think so. Not this time. Not any more. Government at all levels –world, national, state, local, whatever– is the same amorphous blob of busybodies. Government, by it very nature, can only coerce, not nurture, and we are delusional when we think otherwise.

Never Forget: This whole disaster started with a hysterical government response to a government-created disaster. Then, the government told us there were Fourteen Days to Slow the Spread, which is turning into Fourteen Weeks to Destroy Your Life.

They have no plan, no creativity, no nimble-ness of thought beyond force, and coercion, and suppression and the will to print money. Governments kill. They go to war against one another, seek to dominate one another. Governments operate in the realm of a fantasy of a collective will that doesn’t exist.

Rather, there are only individuals, trying to live and eat and breathe. Yes, there are criminals amongst us. But, there are criminals amongst the governing classes, as well.

Don’t ever forget: Governments among men created the current disaster. They cannot be counted on to get us out. That Moral Authority –if indeed it ever existed, even as a temporal whisp in Judeo-Christian America– is gone forever.

THAT’S the view –the real view– from Inside the Clock.