There are still many, many people who believe we had a “pandemic.” They believe, and they write today meaning it seriously, that “Covid” was “really, really bad.” It was “Covid” wot did it. Not the government abrogating our constitutional rights. Not the government taking away our property and livelihoods.
Do not tell me what I should do. Especially do not tell me to forgive. This is a rule here now you are aware of it. I'm happy to have discussions and disagreements but I am not happy to have conversations about forgiveness. Don't buck this. I am not asking you I am telling you. We are not having a negotiation about this. That's all. This thread is over.
YEEEEES, this! So much this! It is/was a respiratory bug that affected some people not at all, some terribly, most mildly, exactly like eleventy million other things. I’ve given a fair amount of thought to how much coverage affects perception of danger. I am anaphylactic-shock-and-die allergic to wasps. Other people would be mildly annoyed by a wasp sting. Imagine the satirical video we could do on a walk out here in the boondocks where I live, or where you will soon live. The LURKING DEATH!!! The TERRIBLE DANGER!!! Surely we should all stay home and stay safe, or perhaps don protective gear. After all, probably lots more people would die if they got stung by one too, only they don't know....and now I am re-considering posting this because you know what? I bet the death rate from wasp stings (from people who don't know they're allergic) would probably be higher than that of COVID. What if I give one of these nutjobs ideas?
I got stung by a wasp this week and I got a dot on my leg, that’s it. It’s so weird how the body can respond so dramatically differently to things. I have one kid who has allergies to nuts... not almonds,not peanuts, but pretty much all the others. No one else 8n the family has a food allergy. Why?????
Josh, I wish I could wave some kind of wand to magically lift you, your friends, and your support structure out of Vermont and into a saner place (although stipulated that “sanity” is relative in this context; it seems the entire country is SOME level of dysfunctional). I’m in a cobalt blue state too, and although my every day experience isn’t as bad as what yours seems to be, I do fantasize about moving somewhere normal, somewhere that still, to some extent, recognizes and defends individual rights.
I wonder when that tipping point occurs--when human connections and support in a place are no longer adequate to offset the creeping authoritarianism. I’m not there yet, but I think about this sort of thing often.
In the meantime, I love your writings and your channel, so at least I have that for comfort and a laugh.
You both would like Fort Wayne IN. I grew up in WNC, trained in GA, lived here 50 yrs. It's flyover country where we enjoy farmers markets, a hundred miles of urban Rivergreenway Trails, cosmopolitan local eateries, and a beautiful baseball stadium midst church steeples and downtown living. The arts are all well representative. You can breath here. You are most welcome to see for yourself. Oh, but we do have our share of delirium here as well. It's not without faults.
There is no paradise I hate to inform you. I live in a very conservative rural area in a purple state, and the chuds while ideologically much more tolerable than the woke Covidians do stupid shit like getting drunk and firing guns across the road in a neighborhood. And note I am strongly pro 2nd Amendment, but degenerates like this make it much harder to defend our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. They also roar around on ATVs and throw garbage like paper cups away in pristine wilderness areas. The truth of the matter is ALL of America is morally bankrupt at this point.
I work at a grocery store with a very Marxissist clientele here in Libtardville. An elderly couple I've waited on for years came through and the wife was all excited for Trump's indictment. I "failed" to fly, on cue, into the required TDS hysteria to "prove" my membership in The Club. I just nodded and smiled. Because I wouldn't comply, she launched into a tirade of insults and accusations that I am "one of Those IDIOTS--- A Trump Supporter!?!?" It was insane. There is a lot of that here---feeling people out and testing their loyalty to the Cult.
Sep 1, 2023·edited Sep 1, 2023Liked by Josh Slocum
It can get worse. Here in the UK it is. Last election in the US about 40% (was it?) voted for a non-liberal-establishment candidate. In Britain, thanks to decades of BBC -type taming, they would get maybe 5% max. You have a 'culture war'.... think that's bad? Here it's been total surrender.
We really are deep into the Bolshevik control of the state phase of their little cultural revolution. People on the "dissident right" now need to meet in secret and use pseudonyms for saying words that were part of common discourse as recently as 10 years ago.
This comment is sort of a catch-up. Forgiveness - through the years I have asked a number of clergy if we are morally required to forgive others. To my surprise, the most definitive response I received was, "I don't know." At least that was an honest reply. More to the point, are we required to forgive a person if that person has not asked us to forgive them? This one has proven to be a real stumper. On my own I have observed in scriptures that Jesus only forgave those who asked him for forgiveness. Likewise, he only helped people who asked him for help. So I think I found my answer.
Another subject: despair at the world situation and just giving up, i.e., there's nothing we can do it about it. Corruption seems to reign now as a sort of "key to the kingdom." Crime seems to pay if you're high enough on the political spectrum, or so it seems. But this movie isn't over yet. The best thing I can recommend - short of just giving up - is to learn how we are all being manipulated in our thinking and in our reaction to events. I go to check my email and I have to wade through screens of "news reports," i.e., propaganda, about political figures who ought to be in jail. I'm not being partisan here, there are plenty of Republicans and Democrats who belong in the clink with the key thrown away. Then we have the entertainment media stars who are bored with their wealth and celebrity status. They know they're mostly the equivalent of a 21st century version of the court jester. They yearn to be taken seriously and they wade into political discussions they know nothing about. Well, there's a lot to be said for freedom of speech but that doesn't mean we have to listen to these airheads who live in their glass bubble life with plenty of security guards to keep them safe. Bottom line: what can we actually do about all this non-stop 24/7 propaganda? Stop listening. Go directly to our email or Facebook page and skip the manipulators clamoring for five seconds of our attention. We can't stop them from seeking our attention, but we don't have to stop and listen. That's our choice.
The first time sucked. Even after the flu-like symptoms passed I was exhausted for months.
Second time I had no symptoms, I wouldn’t even have known I had it, but my employer’s policy at the time was weekly testing and they sent you home if you tested positive so I had to work remotely until I was negative again. I isolated for a week or two and missed out on a cool event in my city that I was really looking forward to attending. Maybe that sounds like first world problems but the whole situation seems stupid in retrospect.
I guess what I’m saying is the virus was real -- and so was the overreaction.
The fact you got sick does not mean there was a pandemic. And the fact you sat home for 2 weeks when you tested positive with no symptoms proves that point. You got sick once, and had a false positive once, but you say you were sick when you weren’t. The test itself was a 100% fraud that pushed up the case count. The pcr teat could not tell anyone if they did or did not have Covid. So basically there was a pandemic created out of whole cloth by a phony test. People always get sick, some years it’s not prevalent then others. That is not a pandemic.
COVID is a social construct. Having novel symptoms and a positive test does not prove, "the virus is real". Were you aware, for example, that one of the genetic primers in the PCR test is just a normal part of the human genome, therefore making the test useless and a positive result meaningless? I encourage you to seek out the work of Denis Rancourt, who looked at all-cause mortality throughout the last 100 years, and the concluded because the spike in the spring of 2020 was simultaneous across the world that it was not caused by the contagion of a virus (which takes time to spread from place to place) but a contagion of malice by governments.
The Pod People shan't catch me napping. Most of all, aside from keeping ourselves alive, we have an obligation to generations yet unborn to be bastions against unbridled latter-day bolshevism. 🧠🎓🗽💪
LOL! The Pod People analogy is precious! When I see a healthy young adult donning a mask, outdoors (yes, I'm in Vermont too), I automatically think "utterly brainwashed - I don't want anything to do with this person."
I think the saddest part for me was that I was just beginning to feel like I liked people again after many years of being freaked out about how people treat the developmentally disabled in public. When my only child was diagnosed as a toddler, I quit my job, ditched my car, and hit the bus line to really get a good look at how people with less functional skills survive under the radar. I did this for 10 years and got to see some really depressing and hope-zapping things. This formed the basis on how I raised my kid, based on what is and what could be. It was just becoming hopeful again as baby grew into child and then teenager and now adult. We never masked. I could not do that to my child. I need my child to trust my judgement and also know that projecting fear to the outside world is not an option. We walk with our head up, eyes straight, and into the world as confident as we can. We got chased around the grocers a few times by some lunatics and got to practice verbally defending ourselves, which was a good real life lesson. The best part was when he realized they were all like Planktons Bucketheads from the old SpongeBob Squarepants movie. He now just tells people "I don't want what you're selling."
I have that Body Snatchers feeling with several coworkers, even longtime ones. It’s spooky. It’s been a particularly bonkers week at work. I want to blame it on the full moon, but I know that’s just the way it is now and it is so depressing.
Yes, The body snatchers. I had that feeling as well and it terrified me. I can say I was and still am traumatized by what I saw people become. Feels like it's all beginning to ramp up again. Masked ones are everywhere here in New England.
I live in "red" Florida and today at WalMart I saw a large center-of-aisle display of masks, almost like they know what's coming. I'm out and about all day, every day, for work and I can tell you a day hasn't gone by in the last three years that I haven't seen at least one person in any given place wearing a mask. I complied while in stores out of politeness when this all first started, and at work because it was mandatory, but I will not comply this time.
I wanted to burn all of my cloth masks when I thought this ended, but I think I'll hang onto them so I'll have a visual when I tell my new grandson about this period of insanity.
As a mental health professional, I regularly hear about the impact covid allegedly had on the mental health of children, young adults, the elderly, etc. Every time, I want to correct the speaker/writer and say, covid *lockdowns*. I guess we don't yet have permission to speak openly in polite company about the tragic miscarriage of justice that was the covid lockdowns. We have to pretend that somehow the mere existence of a novel respiratory virus somehow caused depression, anxiety, addiction, and deaths of despair to skyrocket. Nope. I can't and won't pretend that's true.
Do not tell me what I should do. Especially do not tell me to forgive. This is a rule here now you are aware of it. I'm happy to have discussions and disagreements but I am not happy to have conversations about forgiveness. Don't buck this. I am not asking you I am telling you. We are not having a negotiation about this. That's all. This thread is over.
YEEEEES, this! So much this! It is/was a respiratory bug that affected some people not at all, some terribly, most mildly, exactly like eleventy million other things. I’ve given a fair amount of thought to how much coverage affects perception of danger. I am anaphylactic-shock-and-die allergic to wasps. Other people would be mildly annoyed by a wasp sting. Imagine the satirical video we could do on a walk out here in the boondocks where I live, or where you will soon live. The LURKING DEATH!!! The TERRIBLE DANGER!!! Surely we should all stay home and stay safe, or perhaps don protective gear. After all, probably lots more people would die if they got stung by one too, only they don't know....and now I am re-considering posting this because you know what? I bet the death rate from wasp stings (from people who don't know they're allergic) would probably be higher than that of COVID. What if I give one of these nutjobs ideas?
I got stung by a wasp this week and I got a dot on my leg, that’s it. It’s so weird how the body can respond so dramatically differently to things. I have one kid who has allergies to nuts... not almonds,not peanuts, but pretty much all the others. No one else 8n the family has a food allergy. Why?????
Something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIt20emgLY
This is great. I don't think I've ever seen a better analogue for covid hysteria. And I hope you do take sensible precautions in the woods!
Josh, I wish I could wave some kind of wand to magically lift you, your friends, and your support structure out of Vermont and into a saner place (although stipulated that “sanity” is relative in this context; it seems the entire country is SOME level of dysfunctional). I’m in a cobalt blue state too, and although my every day experience isn’t as bad as what yours seems to be, I do fantasize about moving somewhere normal, somewhere that still, to some extent, recognizes and defends individual rights.
I wonder when that tipping point occurs--when human connections and support in a place are no longer adequate to offset the creeping authoritarianism. I’m not there yet, but I think about this sort of thing often.
In the meantime, I love your writings and your channel, so at least I have that for comfort and a laugh.
You both would like Fort Wayne IN. I grew up in WNC, trained in GA, lived here 50 yrs. It's flyover country where we enjoy farmers markets, a hundred miles of urban Rivergreenway Trails, cosmopolitan local eateries, and a beautiful baseball stadium midst church steeples and downtown living. The arts are all well representative. You can breath here. You are most welcome to see for yourself. Oh, but we do have our share of delirium here as well. It's not without faults.
There is no paradise I hate to inform you. I live in a very conservative rural area in a purple state, and the chuds while ideologically much more tolerable than the woke Covidians do stupid shit like getting drunk and firing guns across the road in a neighborhood. And note I am strongly pro 2nd Amendment, but degenerates like this make it much harder to defend our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. They also roar around on ATVs and throw garbage like paper cups away in pristine wilderness areas. The truth of the matter is ALL of America is morally bankrupt at this point.
Josh, I hear you and agree. I had to turn to religion to help me deal with this phenomenon. I couldn't find any other way.
I did too.
I work at a grocery store with a very Marxissist clientele here in Libtardville. An elderly couple I've waited on for years came through and the wife was all excited for Trump's indictment. I "failed" to fly, on cue, into the required TDS hysteria to "prove" my membership in The Club. I just nodded and smiled. Because I wouldn't comply, she launched into a tirade of insults and accusations that I am "one of Those IDIOTS--- A Trump Supporter!?!?" It was insane. There is a lot of that here---feeling people out and testing their loyalty to the Cult.
I had a similar occasion regarding Ukraine, when an elderly group I know said to "grab your gear, lets go fight the Russians".
When I said "I'd be fighting for the wrong side", they nearly had seizures.
Ah.
Good times.
Made me aware of how many brain dead imbeciles, who only believe "the narrative" are out there though.
LOL! I love it!
It can get worse. Here in the UK it is. Last election in the US about 40% (was it?) voted for a non-liberal-establishment candidate. In Britain, thanks to decades of BBC -type taming, they would get maybe 5% max. You have a 'culture war'.... think that's bad? Here it's been total surrender.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
We really are deep into the Bolshevik control of the state phase of their little cultural revolution. People on the "dissident right" now need to meet in secret and use pseudonyms for saying words that were part of common discourse as recently as 10 years ago.
Josh, you really nailed it in this one. The reaction of many of the people is even scarier than the lust for tyranny of the leaders.
Not wishing to be mean, but the upside for us is that if they think this way, then they are all jabbed.
Which ironically, is the unavoidable downside for them.
This comment is sort of a catch-up. Forgiveness - through the years I have asked a number of clergy if we are morally required to forgive others. To my surprise, the most definitive response I received was, "I don't know." At least that was an honest reply. More to the point, are we required to forgive a person if that person has not asked us to forgive them? This one has proven to be a real stumper. On my own I have observed in scriptures that Jesus only forgave those who asked him for forgiveness. Likewise, he only helped people who asked him for help. So I think I found my answer.
Another subject: despair at the world situation and just giving up, i.e., there's nothing we can do it about it. Corruption seems to reign now as a sort of "key to the kingdom." Crime seems to pay if you're high enough on the political spectrum, or so it seems. But this movie isn't over yet. The best thing I can recommend - short of just giving up - is to learn how we are all being manipulated in our thinking and in our reaction to events. I go to check my email and I have to wade through screens of "news reports," i.e., propaganda, about political figures who ought to be in jail. I'm not being partisan here, there are plenty of Republicans and Democrats who belong in the clink with the key thrown away. Then we have the entertainment media stars who are bored with their wealth and celebrity status. They know they're mostly the equivalent of a 21st century version of the court jester. They yearn to be taken seriously and they wade into political discussions they know nothing about. Well, there's a lot to be said for freedom of speech but that doesn't mean we have to listen to these airheads who live in their glass bubble life with plenty of security guards to keep them safe. Bottom line: what can we actually do about all this non-stop 24/7 propaganda? Stop listening. Go directly to our email or Facebook page and skip the manipulators clamoring for five seconds of our attention. We can't stop them from seeking our attention, but we don't have to stop and listen. That's our choice.
I had COVID twice. Twice that I know of.
The first time sucked. Even after the flu-like symptoms passed I was exhausted for months.
Second time I had no symptoms, I wouldn’t even have known I had it, but my employer’s policy at the time was weekly testing and they sent you home if you tested positive so I had to work remotely until I was negative again. I isolated for a week or two and missed out on a cool event in my city that I was really looking forward to attending. Maybe that sounds like first world problems but the whole situation seems stupid in retrospect.
I guess what I’m saying is the virus was real -- and so was the overreaction.
The fact you got sick does not mean there was a pandemic. And the fact you sat home for 2 weeks when you tested positive with no symptoms proves that point. You got sick once, and had a false positive once, but you say you were sick when you weren’t. The test itself was a 100% fraud that pushed up the case count. The pcr teat could not tell anyone if they did or did not have Covid. So basically there was a pandemic created out of whole cloth by a phony test. People always get sick, some years it’s not prevalent then others. That is not a pandemic.
I am still surprised at the number of people still testing with the phony test.
It seems hopeless, doesn't it?
This whole period has given the lie to the common idea that people are just misled. If they're shown the facts, they will change their minds.
It's not true, and it never was true. This is emotional and religious, not rational.
COVID is a social construct. Having novel symptoms and a positive test does not prove, "the virus is real". Were you aware, for example, that one of the genetic primers in the PCR test is just a normal part of the human genome, therefore making the test useless and a positive result meaningless? I encourage you to seek out the work of Denis Rancourt, who looked at all-cause mortality throughout the last 100 years, and the concluded because the spike in the spring of 2020 was simultaneous across the world that it was not caused by the contagion of a virus (which takes time to spread from place to place) but a contagion of malice by governments.
The Pod People shan't catch me napping. Most of all, aside from keeping ourselves alive, we have an obligation to generations yet unborn to be bastions against unbridled latter-day bolshevism. 🧠🎓🗽💪
LOL! The Pod People analogy is precious! When I see a healthy young adult donning a mask, outdoors (yes, I'm in Vermont too), I automatically think "utterly brainwashed - I don't want anything to do with this person."
I think the saddest part for me was that I was just beginning to feel like I liked people again after many years of being freaked out about how people treat the developmentally disabled in public. When my only child was diagnosed as a toddler, I quit my job, ditched my car, and hit the bus line to really get a good look at how people with less functional skills survive under the radar. I did this for 10 years and got to see some really depressing and hope-zapping things. This formed the basis on how I raised my kid, based on what is and what could be. It was just becoming hopeful again as baby grew into child and then teenager and now adult. We never masked. I could not do that to my child. I need my child to trust my judgement and also know that projecting fear to the outside world is not an option. We walk with our head up, eyes straight, and into the world as confident as we can. We got chased around the grocers a few times by some lunatics and got to practice verbally defending ourselves, which was a good real life lesson. The best part was when he realized they were all like Planktons Bucketheads from the old SpongeBob Squarepants movie. He now just tells people "I don't want what you're selling."
Bless you both!
I have that Body Snatchers feeling with several coworkers, even longtime ones. It’s spooky. It’s been a particularly bonkers week at work. I want to blame it on the full moon, but I know that’s just the way it is now and it is so depressing.
It's not just you, Cindy! This week has been insane for me, as well. People have lost their marbles.
Yes, The body snatchers. I had that feeling as well and it terrified me. I can say I was and still am traumatized by what I saw people become. Feels like it's all beginning to ramp up again. Masked ones are everywhere here in New England.
I live in "red" Florida and today at WalMart I saw a large center-of-aisle display of masks, almost like they know what's coming. I'm out and about all day, every day, for work and I can tell you a day hasn't gone by in the last three years that I haven't seen at least one person in any given place wearing a mask. I complied while in stores out of politeness when this all first started, and at work because it was mandatory, but I will not comply this time.
I wanted to burn all of my cloth masks when I thought this ended, but I think I'll hang onto them so I'll have a visual when I tell my new grandson about this period of insanity.
As a mental health professional, I regularly hear about the impact covid allegedly had on the mental health of children, young adults, the elderly, etc. Every time, I want to correct the speaker/writer and say, covid *lockdowns*. I guess we don't yet have permission to speak openly in polite company about the tragic miscarriage of justice that was the covid lockdowns. We have to pretend that somehow the mere existence of a novel respiratory virus somehow caused depression, anxiety, addiction, and deaths of despair to skyrocket. Nope. I can't and won't pretend that's true.