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PHUKET IN AMERICA |
| By Dr. Jack Wheeler | |
| ToThePointNews.com | |
Phuket ( the "h" is silent: poo-ket), Thailand, is one of the most paradisiacal places in the world. In December, the weather is as perfect as it gets on earth. The water in the ocean is perfect. The soft sand beach is perfect. The gentle breeze rustling through the palm tress is perfect. The service in the five-star hotels on the beach is perfect, the 90 proof tropical drinks with the pineapple slice and cocktail umbrella are perfect. On December 26, 2004, tourists from a score of countries from around the world were enjoying this perfection. The sky was cloudless, the sea calm and crystal clear. You could not ask for a more beautiful day in paradise. Unbeknownst to them, 500 miles away in the Indian Ocean, 19 miles beneath the surface, a tectonic plate ruptured with such force that the entire planet rang like a bell. It was the largest earthquake ever recorded - 9.3 - and it shook the ocean so violently that a massive tidal wave was soon bearing down upon Phuket. The tourists were enjoying the beach and the sun and the tropical drinks without a care in the world. They had not an inkling of their fate. The tsunami came without warning out of the blue sea, and minutes later 9,000 of them were dead. When I was in Las Vegas this past weekend at the FreedomFest discussed by Richard Rahn, I thought of Phuket. Instead of crowding onto beaches, tourists were crowded into casinos - hordes upon hordes of them, porcine and scantily-clad, waddling through Caesar's, Bally's, Bellagio, Paris, the Venetian, and dozens of other over-the-top gambling hall extravaganzas. Their attention was focused on the moment, and how much fleeting excitement they could extract from it. They could care less about what was going on in the world - except the unbearable tragedy of a hermaphroditic has-been rock star OD'ing on drugs. They had no inkling of the tsunami bearing down upon them, a political and economic tidal wave that will destroy their freedom and financial lives. The irony is that in their midst were a couple thousand prescient people learning all about the coming tsunami at the FreedomFest, organized by my friend of many years, Mark Skousen. I told Mark that he reminded me of a ten year-old English girl from Surrey, Tilly Smith. Tilly was with her family playing on a Phuket beach when she noticed the ocean was suddenly receding and there were frothing bubbles all over the surface of the water. Two weeks before, her geography teacher had taught a lesson on tsunamis and she recognized what was happening. She told her parents, who were wise enough to pay attention to their child, and the family quickly warned everyone on the beach. Before the tsunami hit, the beach was evacuated without a single loss of life. Tilly had saved hundreds of lives. By holding the FreedomFest and making attendees aware of the coming purposeful destruction of our American freedom and prosperity, Mark Skousen is like Tilly Smith on the beach at Phuket. Tilly was paying attention to the tsunami warning signs that so many thousands of others were oblivious to. As a TTPer, you are well aware of what is coming - massive fascism, massive taxation, massive inflation, massive impoverishment of scores of millions. But all those folks in all those Vegas casinos are not - or don't want to be. I used to really like Vegas. I have many fond memories of going there often with my folks in the 1950s, as my Dad was a close friend of Wilbur Clark who owned the Desert Inn. Today, it has metastasized into something ridiculously grotesque. How symbolic is Vegas for the spasm of straight-out political insanity our nation is experiencing now? I'm not sure - for although I have written often about this Quantum Weirdness, it's another thing to confront it experientially. Vegas is where you can do so. It's a safe bet that a majority of the proletariat throngs in the casinos voted for Zero, that their response to the possibility that his presidency is illegitimate would be insouciance. If you questioned their patriotism towards America, you might get into a fist fight. How then did they elect as their president a freshman senator with a background so mysterious he can't even produce his birth certificate and so left-wing he is indistinguishable from a communist? As the evidence mounts ever higher by the day that he is destroying our economy rather than revitalizing it, that he is jeopardizing our national security rather than protecting it, that his greatest passion is expanding government control over our lives rather than expanding our freedom, how can they continue to be indifferent to his presidential illegitimacy? A TTPer compiled this list of Zero unknowns: Original, vault copy birth certificate - Not released Certification of Live Birth - posted on Internet - Counterfeit Obama/Dunham marriage license - Not released Obama/Dunham divorce - Released (only by independent investigators) Soetoro/Dunham marriage license - Not released Soetoro adoption records - Not released Soetoro/Dunham divorce - Released (only by independent investigators) Fransiskus Assisi School application - Released (only by independent investigators) Punahou School records - Not released Selective Service Registration - Released - Counterfeit Occidental College records - Not released Passport - Not released and records scrubbed clean by Obama's terrorism and intelligence adviser. Columbia College records - Not released Columbia thesis - Not released Harvard College records - Not released Harvard Law Review articles - None Baptism certificate - None Medical records - Not released Illinois State Senate records - None Illinois State Senate schedule - Lost Law practice client list - Not released University of Chicago scholarly articles - None This TTPer is in a state of apoplexy over the indifference so many Americans have towards this. I can understand, for it is beyond bizarre - way beyond. The question is - what do we do about it? One answer among others is: be Tilly Smith. The people in Phuket were ignoring and indifferent to the tsunami warning signs. They were relaxing, playing, on vacation, and really, really did not want to be bothered by someone running around hysterically claiming the sky is falling. Yet when they stopped sipping their drinks with the cocktail umbrella and looked out to sea, their eyes told them something not good was happening. Finally and just in time they realized the little girl and her parents were trying to save their lives from mortal danger. America has had freedom and prosperity for so long that many think this is a fact of nature and could not be any other way. They really are like vacationers on the beaches of Phuket. They need a Tilly Smith to point out the warning signs and wake them up to reality. You may ask - what would Tilly have done if no one paid attention to her? At some point, she and her parents would most likely have said adios and run for their own lives. Advice on how to do this is the purpose of Rebel's Plan B columns, such as this week on EverBank. You'll find that your fellow TTPers on the Forum will offer uniquely valuable advice as well. When do you decide to give up warning others and run for yourself? That's your decision, but I'd suggest waiting until the 2010 elections. Take all the Plan B measures you think appropriate in the meantime - but do all you can to help your neighbors and fellow Americans recover from their temporary insanity. The bottom line is that the 2010 elections are going to make or break America. If Americans remain in Vegas, fat, lazy, ignorant and indifferent to Zero's tsunami of destruction, then it's over. The loss of our freedom and prosperity may be unrecoverable. I don't think that's going to happen. I think November 2010 will see another kind of tsunami, of outrage and contempt towards Zero and the impossibly corrupt Pelosicrats that will sweep them out of power in Congress - and old establishment RINO Republicans with them. Then the stage will be set for the end of Zero in 2012. This will not happen automatically. It will only happen if each of us takes it upon his or herself to be a Tilly Smith. That's the way to avoid Phuket in America. |