Americans generally have an aversion to talking about or thinking about death. It’s really scary to most of us. As a result, Americans tend to put off planning for their demise much less an early or untimely one.
At the end of last year, Brandy Vaughan, the valiant truth teller and Merck whistleblower who started LearnTheRisk.org died suddenly and unexpectedly. In her passing, she left behind her beautiful, young son, Bastien. Although she stated clear intentions just prior to her death of what she wanted for Bastien’s care in case of her untimely demise, she hadn’t made the legal or even written directions by preparing a will or trust designating Bastien’s caretakers when she died or at least one many were privy to.
In the end, people Brandy did not even like ended up stepping in and playing a role in blackening the reputation of Brandy’s last trusted friend whom she told she wanted her son to stay with. At least one of these factions was a competitor in her field who wanted her life’s work and foundation defunded, and those previous funders instructed to send their money to this competitor’s organization. I personally witnessed him sharing links to his own foundation as he recommended people no longer fund Learn The Risk after they had watched his smear piece “documentary” on one of Brandy’s best friends and new CEO of Learn The Risk. It was a hot mess.
Worst of all, Bastien ended up caught in the middle with these people his mom expressed she did not like or trust controlling the narratives around him, making him feel that one of his mom’s best friends if not her closest and best friend in the world was stealing money from him. Is there more to this story? There is. Brandy had also written that if she died unexpectedly, to have her untimely death investigated. Her friends rallied up funds of Brandy’s supporters to make that investigation happen while offering to personally cover any financial care or needs for Bastien. But this competitor and hoard of Santa Barbara locals who refused to acknowledge Brandy’s last wishes in every case refused Brandy’s friends’ requests to donate, insisted that funds had to be an either/or scenario (going to Bastien’s care OR the investigation) and they did everything in their power to stop the investigation into Brandy’s death. They insisted she had a gallbladder issue that had been unaddressed which they insisted had killed her. After the investigation, it was proved that her gallbladder had zero influence on her untimely demise.
What happened to Bastien?
I wish more people would ask this question. Amid the Covid crisis, Bastien was sent to France to live with a grandmother he had a few nice visits with a handful of times throughout his life. France has now banned homeschooling in an attempt to get all school aged children vaccinated and demands vaccine passports for walking around and living life. The reality is, one of the greatest opponents of vaccination in the world, much less the US, has a son who has likely been vaccinated with probably the most dubious experimental vaccine ever made.
Is that what Brandy would have wanted? What do you think?
It’s a tragic story. It could be your story or my story if we refuse to truly consider what happens to our kids in the event of our deaths. While you or I may never have wanted our kids vaccinated for anything much less the completely useless and pointless Covid vaccine (as far as children are concerned), we may be setting our kids on a path toward just that if we don’t seriously plan for what happens if the unthinkable happens.
Here’s just a few questions I have asked myself in the past 18 months which have changed my wishes for my children’s future drastically. I have shared them so you, too, may ask yourself about the people who would automatically care for your kids if you passed away without express written instructions or better yet, a legal document stating otherwise:
Does this person (or people) share my values? That’s a biggie. Well, this is likely a close relative who loves your kid(s), wants the best for him/her/them and feels inside they would be the best care giver. However, when it comes to things you truly value that may change the trajectory of the child’s life such as education, medical decisions and nutrition, you may find yourself coming to the conclusion that these people although close, loving and well-intentioned are miles from the future you see for your offspring. It’s time to think about it. Since these people love and care about my children almost as much as I do, if I don’t have something in a legal document, a fight not unlike those around Brandy’s son could ensue that ends with kids living a completely different life than I hoped or imagined, perhaps facing something I spent my waking hours defending them from.
Would this person defend those values? We are now living in a crazy era. For the past 18 months, we have been challenged more than any time in history to defend our values. While many relatives and loved ones, mine included, may be of the same mindset as far as values, thoughts and beliefs are concerned, they may not be willing to or desire to confront the challenges to those beliefs head on. Often people with the same mindset act very differently from one another when challenged. I’ve been watching this happen over tiny things. For example, without any direct force I have seen people who claim to share my values decide to run into a market with a mask on to fill a prescription because it was either more convenient than declaring oneself “exempt” and facing any possibly social ostracism or perhaps because going out of one’s way to find a pharmacy that respected one’s right to breathe freely was a pain in the butt. We’ve all witnessed the buckling, the bowing and the readiness to capitulate to tyranny to fit in or play along in hopes it will all end soon. Most people in my area capitulated. It has demonstrated to many of us what the people who give lip service to a set of values actually show with their way of life when the challenge is minimal. It’s good to ask ourselves how larger challenges could affect our children’s futures.
To what end would this person go to defend these values? Many of us have already watched the people we love yield to things which are far beneath their values with little to no provocation. Some of them have not given in to the vaccine yet. The question remains, at what point do they buckle on this line in the sand? If a law is passed that says they must turn in their guns or wear the mask or close their business or take a vaccine will they automatically obey the law? Many people who may think the vaccine is needless, pointless and potentially dangerous also think worse of people who break the law. Many people still haven’t considered what they think of the law, the police, the military or the government going against their values when in general they have held these in high regard. If those “in charge” go against their values how will they respond? In fact, most people have been conditioned to believe for generations that even if one disagrees with a law and it goes against one’s own morality, the truly moral thing to do is to obey it or go along with it until one can change the law. There’s a lot of Biblical misinterpretations promoting this very behavior. How would it affect your most beloved to be cared for by someone with moral incongruity who is not willing to ignore or disobey a law to defend him/her/them?
Is the caretaker prepared to defend their values? Let’s say that so far, your designated caretaker fits all of these criteria, but doesn’t have the means or wherewithal to stand up to a direct threat on the child’s bodily autonomy. Maybe they haven’t considered taking up arms against a grave threat. Maybe they haven’t considered or wouldn’t consider relocation to protect the children beyond leaving the city much less the county, the state or the country. To what lengths would the caretaker be able to protect your son or daughter? How prepared is he or she to do so?
Does this designated person recognize where the threat could come from? While I put this last, it could almost be interchangeable with the two prior. I brought up that the state could be the very initiators of the threat. I brought up that arms and mobility could be required to defend against grave threats. All of that is worthless though if there is no conscious understanding that it is indeed the state in our unprecedented times which would most likely bear the threat that the caregiver must be poised to aim toward or flee from. I say this with a view of history. Around the time of the second World War, most Jewish people under German threats or mere orders went with their kids to concentration camps assuming that would be the best way to go along to get along only to find horrors unimaginable therein. They largely complied to avoid confrontation. No one could have conceived what happened in the camps. Had these people imagined the cruelty of ordinary people under the propagandized fear of “disease spreaders,” they would have collectively fought back and potentially stopped the Holocaust. Today, we are seeing parts of the world in very similar situations. A lot of the dissenting public is still going along and shuffling wherever they are herded. Personally, I’m only considering leaving my kids with someone I know would be dead before allowing my kids to end up in a camp somewhere or being the subjects of medical experimentation.
I am going to be speaking soon with an estate lawyer, planner and activist who understands some of what health freedom advocates, libertarians, voluntaryists and anarchists are looking at when creating the best outcome for our children whether we are alive to see it or not. As we get our affairs in order, and share this process, I encourage all the parents out there to give some consideration to future planning for the wellbeing of your children in the event of the unthinkable. It could be the difference between life for generations to come or death from cardiovascular or neurological events, infertility, blood clots and who knows what else? All the hard work and effort you may have put into living independently and teaching your young children those values of liberty and morality could be swept away if they are put in the hands of a person or people who undermine all that before it gets set in to the child’s blueprint.
For me, personally, I won’t risk that.