This Jan. 25 is Chinese New Year – year 4718 – for the quarter of humankind with historic roots in China. The Chinese lunar calendar is based on a 12-year cycle of a dozen animals – rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. We are entering a Year of the Rat.
You and I most likely do not believe in Chinese astrology, but one person in four does believe to some degree that the animal year of birth shapes personalities and influences political, economic and personal decisions.
Chinese “Ruler for life” Xi Jinping was born June 15, 1953, in an unfortunate “year of the snake.” Such “snake people,” including China’s dictator-founder Mao, are purported to be skilled, bright and motivated, but also proud, materialistic, vain, venomous, scheming, cunning and can speak with a “forked tongue.” Democratic presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., born Sept. 8, 1941, is also a snake person. So is fellow socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., born Oct. 13, 1989. (President Donald Trump, born June 14, 1946, is a faithful dog.)
We mockingly glance at Western horoscopes heralding that today the sun is in Capricorn or Pisces, on its annual path through the 12 constellations.
What concerns “scientific” folks is that 2020 is a leap year, the one year in four that adds a Feb. 29 (omitted only in years ending in “00”) used to keep our days synchronized with Earth’s orbit around the sun. Presidential election years, aptly, are “leap” years.
But we find ourselves humming the old Paul Simon song “The Boy in the Bubble”: “The way we look at us all … / The way we look to a distant constellation / that’s dying in a corner of the sky. / These are the days of miracle and wonder / And don’t cry baby, don’t cry …”
Astronomers are watching the giant red star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion the Hunter. Once one of the 10 brightest objects in our sky, despite being 700 light years away, Betelgeuse is now dimming and apparently about to explode as a Supernova – or was in the light it emitted 700 years ago.
Does it concern us that our sun has the fewest sunspots in 200 years, or that during the Maunder (sunspot) Minimum (1645-1715) the River Thames in London routinely froze solid in winter? Or that Earth’s magnetic field has been weakening by roughly 5% per century, and that our magnetic shield against interstellar radiation might soon collapse or flip? Or that major sky-polluting volcanoes are suddenly erupting from the Philippines to Peru, and from Alaska to near Mexico City, cooling the Earth?
Are we more bothered by the politically promoted “global warming” propaganda to scare infantile ignoramuses into socialism – or by the fact that Australia has just arrested 180 people, including leftist activists, some of whom had fire accelerants in their possession and as arsonists may have started the infernos of unwisely planted “gasoline tree” eucalyptus forests, like those in California?
“It’s a turn-around jump shot. / It’s everybody jump start. / It’s every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” sings Paul Simon.
Popular socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Communist Soviet Union, as of this writing has refused to fire his paid state presidential campaign field organizer Kyle Jurek. Jurek was videotaped saying that Milwaukee will be burned down this summer if Sanders is not given the Democratic convention’s nomination.
Jurek also called for death for certain moderate Democrats, and said that Republican Trump supporters will be imprisoned in Gulag-style socialist “reeducation” camps. “Snake” Sanders never said such things, but by refusing to fire his staffer who did, “Feel the Burn” Bernie is implicitly endorsing these violent threats.
In this year of the Demock Rat, one of America’s two political parties has repudiated democracy, which means that those who lose elections are to let the winners govern. Instead, Democrats have used their partisans in the bureaucracy, judiciary and media to “resist” President Donald Trump, to roadblock his policies from undoing leftist government. The Federal Trade Commission, which requires truth in advertising, should prohibit them from using the name Democratic, because they are doing everything possible to thwart democracy.
These glazed-eyed “woke” partisans have made clear that whatever they cannot rule, they will ruin.
As one of their revealing mob chants goes: “No Trump, no wall, no USA at all!” They aim to steal and dismantle the USA and replace it with a socialist global government. They are engaged in a treasonous, dishonest impeachment coup d’etat, attempting to overthrow the votes of 63 million Trump-supporting Americans.
Lowell Ponte is a former Reader’s Digest Roving Editor. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other major publications. His latest paper co-authored with Craig R. Smith, “China’s Top Secret War,” shows how to rethink several areas of investment to protect and grow your savings against the little-known economic threats the People’s Republic of China poses. For a free, postpaid copy, call toll-free 800-630-1492.
