Useful Folk

August 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I saw a video clip the other day that made me think, which I’m sure was not the fellow’s intention since he seems to hate old people and think they should all be done away with. Still, this fellow, with more hardware poked into his face than I have in my toolbox, said that some old guy came up to him, gave him twenty dollars, and suggested he remove the hardware. Rude? Probably? Uncalled for? Well, perhaps. But the question is, why would someone make himself into such a spectacle if he didn’t want to be noticed? Anyway, he ranted on and on about how useless “the boomers” are, without any real knowledge of what the boomer generation is. He said they just sat around and did nothing, which some older folks do, especially those older than the boomers. For the most part, the boomers I know are still working, taking care of grandchildren, volunteering, writing, gardening . . . any number of activities.

It seemed to me that he was not the sort of person to get involved with older folks who are strangers, such as those he’d meet if he were volunteering at a retirement home, so the only way he would know if “the boomers” did nothing but sit around all day was if he knew someone personally, someone perhaps who wouldn’t give him money when he asked. Which made his rant more personal than a sweeping generality, especially since he said he needed gas and the twenty dollars the old boomer gave him was necessary. Which completely negates his rant, because obviously, that old boomer had a particular use and wasn’t worthless to the ranter after all.

Apparently, a lot of the younger generations share his viewpoint about “the boomers” being useless and that they should all be put out of their misery (the misery the young people are feeling, that is, not the misery the old folks probably aren’t feeling). Some people see this attitude as the first step toward generational warfare, which is entirely possible. (Supposedly one of the reasons they hate older folks is they are supporting those “useless” people with their social security taxes, but that there are too few of them to support all of the old people and have money left for themselves. It would seem, then, as if the end — based solely on numbers — would favor the oldsters.) Even some of the self-proclaimed “elder millennial” commentators I used to listen to (emphasis on “used to”) turn out to have that same anti-boomer prejudice, which is funny because they hate being classified as part of the black monolith that’s supposed to be voting democratic, but they see “boomers” as just another faceless monolith.

All of that is preamble to what the hardware guy made me think: Who, actually, deserves to live? Who among us is so worthy of life that everyone else should be eliminated to make room for them? What makes a person worthy of living? What makes one person more useful than another? Is anyone useful, really?

Is a baby contributing to society? Is a kid going to school? What about a person who doesn’t work but manages to get enough handouts to live a life of leisure while pleading poverty? What about the rich folks who are funding the subversive movements in this country? What about the fraudsters? What about the teachers who propagandize rather than teach kids to think? What about the university bigwigs who take money from enemies of the United States to further propagandize the students? What about the scientists who develop drugs and other substances to keep people on a medical treadmill? What about the “experts” who make up the news — or slant it — rather than simply reporting it? What about the editors who decide what we are too stupid to understand? What about the commentators who spew innuendo with straight faces?

If we were to do away with all the worthless folk, the only ones left would be you and me, and I sometimes wonder about you.

[Sorry, I couldn’t resist. That’s something my dad would say to me when I was young: “All the world’s crazy but you and me, and I sometimes wonder about you.” He sure did think that was funny!]

Despite that last facetious remark, there is a tinge of truth to it. In my case, I might not still be working at a paying job, but I am working in my garden, which gives a lot of people pleasure —my neighbors, people walking by, people driving past on purpose to see what I am doing. When I do see people, I always have a smile or a kind word or a hug to give away. I might not be contributing much to the economy, but I leave behind barely perceptible footprints: I live on a miniscule income, drive as little as possible, don’t waste food or much of anything. I just try to live a quiet life of peace, which adds to the entire mantle of peace that perhaps protects us.

Who’s to say that’s not as important as . . . well, as anything that’s important, if there is anything that’s important.

So, to turn the tables on the ranter, perhaps by giving me something to think about, he actually turned out to be one of the useful folk.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, culture, dealing with old age, gardening, life, relationships. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

A Brief History of Election Fraud

August 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The claim of no election fraud in the USA would be laughable if it weren’t so . . . fraudulent. I don’t know if people who say the elections are secure are truly ignorant, naïve, being ingenuous, or flat out lying, but election theft has been part of our heritage from the very beginning. Remember Tammany Hall? Probably not, if you’re one of those generations who were never taught history, but Tammany Hall was a Democratic political machine in New York in the 1800s that kept one hand in the till and the other hand on the voting lever. They bribed and intimidated their way into power, controlled city contracts, embezzled millions from the taxpayers, traded favors and jobs to immigrants for votes, turned in ballots for dead people, and “miscounted” votes.

In 1946, in what is known as the Battle of Athens in Tennessee, returning veterans fought an actual gun battle to prevent Democrat candidates from committing voter fraud.

Lyndon Johnson apparently stole his Texas Senate seat in 1948 with a late ballot drop of over 200 votes. The theft was so egregious that it was pursued all the way to the supreme court, but the court, for some unknown reason, declined to hear the case.

The Kennedys stole the 1960 election. Well, Joe Kennedy did, anyway, by manipulating (buying?) the Illinois vote. (He wasn’t exactly a sterling character; he made a fortune by aggressively exploiting weaknesses in the stock market. Because he knew the system so well, FDR appointed him to clean up the stock market and to get rid of all the practices that made him so rich.) Nixon wanted to challenge the vote and fight for the presidency, but his handler, the Bush patriarch — yes, those Bushes — told him to back off and that he’d get his turn. (Remember at the end when Nixon said that they wouldn’t have him to push around anymore? He didn’t mean the electorate. He meant the Bushes.)

In 1982, a grand jury found that in Chicago alone, there had been 100,000 fraudulent ballots. Some people were even convicted.

Voter fraud has been widespread in Colorado for a couple of decades at least, though these fraudsters are more discreet about it — no late-night drops of exactly 35,000 votes. No major changes to the big cities that might have more oversight. Instead, as they have bragged to researchers, they tweak the ballots in the smaller areas where a few votes here and a few there make a huge difference. In fact, one guy bragged that he knew the names of thousands of dead people in Colorado, and he could get them to vote when necessary. (If you ever wonder how Colorado, one of the most middle-of-the-road states, became rampantly leftist with only 25% of the electorate registered as Democrat, that’s how it happened. If you’re also wondering why they went after Tina Peters so hard, this is it — they needed to make an example of her so they could keep their scam going.)

Even worse, what voters vote for don’t always stay the course. Many years ago, Colorado tried to pass a bill that gave gays preferential treatment, sort of a DEI before DEI. Colorado voters voted it down, but Barbara Streisand and her ilk decided it was anti-gay, though it wasn’t. She made a huge national stink, and suddenly, the whole thing disappeared. I never did understand that — the government of Colorado overriding the votes of its citizens to pacify an aged celebrity who didn’t even live in the state. But they did it.

So, safe and secure elections. Right. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

Until the elections of the past decade, it didn’t matter who won anyway, because Democrats and Republicans have almost always been two sides of the same coin, both betting that coin against the taxpayer. If you doubt my word, ask yourself why so many of the politicians supposedly representing us refuse to pass legislation that the majority of citizens in both parties want and need. You probably won’t like the answer.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

No Feeling of Vindication

August 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been sitting here mechanically playing a game of solitaire and letting my mind make sense of what is going on with the Covid hearings without any input from my emotions or a mental push from my conscious mind.

It’s odd — I don’t feel any vindication at having known exactly what was going on back then. Hints of the “conspiracy” were running through threads of pandemic panic, and since those same conspiracies (not theories, real conspiracies) have always been in the background of any biological or chemical weapon development (especially since such research has been banned for decades), it was apparent to me what was happening. I also had the advantage of the years of research that formed the back story of my novel A Spark of Heavenly Fire, in addition to a well-developed sense of pattern recognition. (I originally wrote “over-developed,” which leads to a tendency to draw connections among events that might not have anything to do with one another, but in this case, I was right on target.)

More importantly, for me, I didn’t have anyone telling me I couldn’t see a grandbaby unless I got the shots, or any other such personal coercion, so I was able to deal with that whole horror on my own terms. As to why I never wrote about my suspicions back then — it was due to a rather feebly developed sense of self-preservation. (I say “feebly” because it’s obvious from some of my more recent politically leaning posts that the thin veneer of self-preservation is wearing off.) They scared me with all that talk of arresting people who didn’t have a certificate of vaccination, and apps to track people or to turn in people you knew who didn’t comply. Too much like the “big brother” in 1984, who turned out to be one’s fellow citizens. And they were silencing anyone — even doctors and nurses — who told a different story, and some of those people are still paying the price for telling the truth. So I kept my mouth shut, both online and off. Not that it would have mattered — no one cared what I thought.

I mostly feel sad for all the people who got caught up in the megalomania of this man and who were forever damaged by his policies. But despite what we are hearing about his diary, a betrayal of such enormity never comes from a single bureaucrat. He needed backers, protectors, accomplices, media people to keep the fear escalating, lawmakers to force into law edicts that people would otherwise not have gone along with, governments to coerce people into compliance, gatekeepers to cover up the truth, governors to create unnecessary mandates, and everyone to tout “the science” and ridicule the non-believers. If you’re wondering why he’s taking the fifth despite being pardoned for his crimes (and even though “taking the fifth doesn’t hold in such a case like this because he’s already protected), it’s that if he lists names, he’s a dead man. Literally. I have no doubt names of consequence are hiding behind his silence, but although I can guess at some, other names are lost in the utterly secret roster of the global elite that has always wanted to destroy this country (and now, apparently, most of the world, too). He was the face of the pandemic, and now he’s the sacrificial goat. Everyone else who was complicit will simply go on with their lives as if they don’t have blood on their hands.

I doubt I would have paid much attention to what is coming out in the hearings, even with his thunderous silence, but there’s so much else coming out now, things that have been kept secret for generations, things I’ve known from my research without knowing a lot of the specific details. And the details are appalling. And appallingly sad. The huge amounts of money — trainloads — that are moved out of the treasury with no accountability. The utterly corrupt career politicians. The creeping communism. The activist groups that keep free speech for themselves but gag everyone else for disagreeing. Proof that outside operators have almost always interfered with our government, paying off those who are supposed to be on our side.

All this might be shocking to people who are hearing about it for the first time (if, in fact, they are hearing about it since the alphabet media are generally silent on anything that doesn’t fit their leftist narrative), but it’s not shocking to me.

I do feel sad for myself, though in a more general way. A lifetime of trying to peek behind the scenes to get glimpses of the truth has led to . . . nothing, really. Well, it did lead me safely through the pandemic where, despite my fears (and, oh they were so good at playing on our fears!), I was able to stick to my convictions. But other than that?

Just sadness.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »