My daughter goes to a Chicago public high school. The public schools finally, about 1.5 weeks ago, lifted the mask requirement, though this was communicated with insipid emails about how we were a community and had to care for each other as we moved forward blah blah blah. The heartbreaking thing to me is that my daughter still wears her mask at school, as she says all the kids do. We are very much an anti-vax, anti-mandate, this-is-control-not-science household, yet she wears the mask. She won't talk about it. Yes, peer pressure is very strong in high school. I also sometimes fear these kids have pulled into themselves so much that they're afraid to show their faces.
Oh man thank you. Thank you for this. Because I've been saying this--the introductory part of this post--for almost half a century, and it's nice to have some company from someone more credentialed to discuss matters of, you know, science.
Funny what a long road it is that leads to hell. We've been primed for getting close to a century to this bullshit, and it's been the destruction of the concept of human agency in, like, everything. Now you're not a fucking drunk who's destroyed his family but a patient with substance abuse disorder.
In my early twenties I and a close friend founded a neighborhood Al-Anon group. We'd grown up with alcoholic dads and she had an alcoholic husband and a young child and she was dealing with a pretty overwhelming situation. So she asked me to do this with her.
And week after week it was the same story. It was almost entirely women in the group, and it was the same, same, same story and it never changed. And that mantra of acceptance for what you cannot change made you just never change anything. Because your husband wasn't a self-indulgent bastard who didn't give a shit if the family was gonna lose the house or the kids went to school after having cried all night. He had a disease.
And here we are! No one is responsible for anything. If you have a mental illness, seeking durable treatment for it is your last responsibility. You have full permission to whine or weep to your therapist for decades rather than grabbing yourself by your own head hair and struggling toward health. You have full permission to demand that your delusion be taken as reality and the entire medical, educational and legal establishments will let you take their hands and walk down that continuing road to implosion with you.
I can't remember if I already posted this comment... Spoke with an older lady a few weeks ago. Told me her entire family was masked up and shot up to the hilt and they we're all "battling covid". She told me they were all recovering but, "we are really scared we're going to get sick again because the mask mandate was dropped in her area." My jaw hit the floor. We have a long road ahead of us.
The thing they kills me about the mask zealots are those who play the “you’re being cruel to the immunocompromised and people with cancer”... pre-Covid those things existed, we weren’t expected to mask up, and I rarely saw anyone masked. I find myself so angry at people wearing masks. It’s irrational anger, I know. They have been poisoned. But I’m angry just the same.
Excellent piece señor gato. The same concept seems to fit just as well with the current fad of denying the reality of men and women in order to make that very small percentage of people who suffer from gender dysphoria feel comfortable. Everyone knows that what the character Joseph in "Kindergarten Cop" said is true: "Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina." It truly is kindergarten-level knowledge. Yet people have been goaded into taking the stance that this fact, as old as the human race itself, is false. Now, even a supreme court nominee can't admit it and can't define what a "woman" is. Tell me this isn't an addiction.
I refused to wear a mask the entire time. In March 2020 I was still doing a radio show and was researching all things Covid, masks, social distancing, China, etc.
According to the BIG THREE, Lancet, NEJM and JAMA, masking was not EVER intended for airborne viruses. All three had research published as late at early April, 2020 that said precisely that. All three articles had many links to actual studies and research.
BUT...BUT!!! By May of 2020 all three had published retractions of sorts saying masks are essential to stopping the spread of the Wuhan Flu. HOWEVER, not a single one of the retractions had any scholarly links to research or studies of ANY KIND!!! I knew then, it was all a scam.
In the ensuing months I was thrown out of quite a few establishments but I held my ground. There was a time when my levels of anxiety were quite high but I knew I had to remain strong.
When I would engage folks with math, facts, etc. after the stupid questions about "are you a doctor" I would be faced with blank stares or with a response of why don't you do it to make other people comfortable?
Here is why. God calls us Christians to be salt and light in a dark and fallen world. I.e. To shout TRUTH from the highest mountaintops. Enabling fearful behavior isn't helping those who are fearful. That would be like enabling an addicted child by letting them use in my home.
Mass Formation Psychosis is REAL. Like the BAD CAT I predict that it will return with a vengeance. Just look at the public's reaction to Ukraine vs. Russia. Total pysop. And most folks have taken the bait; hook, line, sinker, rod, reel, fisherman, boat, trailer...ALL OF IT!!!
When will it return? Can anyone say "Midterm Elections"?
thing about junkies is that they don't live very long. there's a reason why it's called dope. seems safe to say that the hardcore muzzle addicts will line up for booster after booster until they're boostered to death. you can't play russian roulette - woops, sorry, ukrainian roulette - forever
"indoor mask requirements were finally lifted on puerto rico about 2 weeks ago. i was at the supermarket last week. there was no mask requirement."
Got a haircut here this morning. First time in 18 months I didn't have to mask up - no one inside was masked, either, which was encouraging - and first time in 18 months I didn't have to worry about the haircutter being careless and cutting the elastic on my THIS IS DUMB mask (which she had done twice in the past).
Costco, Supermax, PetSmart, Petco, post office, Marshalls, Stuffed Avocado, pro shop at Coco Beach, all the same.
But the cowardly fools at the Shipping Unlimited store at Garden Hills Plaza in Guaynabo still waved their arms like they were on the tarmac, landing a wayward plane, when I tried to enter maskless. Fools are still among us, and now I know they're addicts.
I would be smiling at you in your grocery store. Just because someone else had (has) on a mask doesn't make me feel as thought I should cover my face. I never had that "feeling" that I "should" for others' sake. Does that make me a (1.) selfish/bad person (2.) thinking person (3.) rebel ? Dunno. Don't care at this point.
We're blessed that we live in a state (NH...the "Live Free or Die" state) where we only had about a three month mandatory mask mandate and even though our cases surged once the vaccines started rolling out, our governor (who is pretty wishy washy) refused to re-introduce the mandate. That said, many towns instituted their own.
I almost never wore a mask and at times it was difficult to be the only person in an entire grocery store, for example, without a mask. Thankfully, I was never harassed like some of my friends, but it was hard to stand alone. My heart would be beeping hard the entire time I was in the store and I avoided eye contact and stay smiling while I shopped. (I was pretty excited when I made it back to the car without a confrontation! LOL!) And, yes, there were masked people at the front of the store, but I would just walk past them and not respond, and thankfully no one ever called the cops. LOL! (Actually, our governor said he would not enforce the mask mandate so..).
My kids had to wear them at work for a while and the most interesting thing happened...my youngest, who was an even bigger anti-masker than I am...started to say things like, "It's not that bad...I'm used to it..." It kind of freaked me out because you saw this change in attitude from someone who was very strongly against it to it not being that big of a deal. Thankfully, they don't need to wear them anymore but I can't imagine the mental issues this is going to cause young children who sit in masks all day at school. It's abusive and I struggle to not say something to unmasked adults I see out with their little masked children. It's a grotesque abuse of power, telling little impressionable children that they're going to kill grandma if they don't wear their useless mask.
I had a hairdresser tell me that her clients were "good people" because they masked up (I didn't). I told her that's a bad measure of whether someone is "good." Isn't it far better and more loving to tell someone the truth? This has been my mantra all along, I refuse to wear it because it gives people a false of security and I'm participating in lying about it's usefulness. It's better, and I would say right, to tell my neighbor the truth instead of supporting their delusion. The analogy of having a beer with an alcoholic because it makes them feel better is spot on.
My daughter goes to a Chicago public high school. The public schools finally, about 1.5 weeks ago, lifted the mask requirement, though this was communicated with insipid emails about how we were a community and had to care for each other as we moved forward blah blah blah. The heartbreaking thing to me is that my daughter still wears her mask at school, as she says all the kids do. We are very much an anti-vax, anti-mandate, this-is-control-not-science household, yet she wears the mask. She won't talk about it. Yes, peer pressure is very strong in high school. I also sometimes fear these kids have pulled into themselves so much that they're afraid to show their faces.
Oh man thank you. Thank you for this. Because I've been saying this--the introductory part of this post--for almost half a century, and it's nice to have some company from someone more credentialed to discuss matters of, you know, science.
Funny what a long road it is that leads to hell. We've been primed for getting close to a century to this bullshit, and it's been the destruction of the concept of human agency in, like, everything. Now you're not a fucking drunk who's destroyed his family but a patient with substance abuse disorder.
In my early twenties I and a close friend founded a neighborhood Al-Anon group. We'd grown up with alcoholic dads and she had an alcoholic husband and a young child and she was dealing with a pretty overwhelming situation. So she asked me to do this with her.
And week after week it was the same story. It was almost entirely women in the group, and it was the same, same, same story and it never changed. And that mantra of acceptance for what you cannot change made you just never change anything. Because your husband wasn't a self-indulgent bastard who didn't give a shit if the family was gonna lose the house or the kids went to school after having cried all night. He had a disease.
And here we are! No one is responsible for anything. If you have a mental illness, seeking durable treatment for it is your last responsibility. You have full permission to whine or weep to your therapist for decades rather than grabbing yourself by your own head hair and struggling toward health. You have full permission to demand that your delusion be taken as reality and the entire medical, educational and legal establishments will let you take their hands and walk down that continuing road to implosion with you.
Where I live there has been no mask mandate since Feb. 2021.
Still yesterday while grocery shopping there are maskers.
Not the majority at all, but they’re still out there.
The super serious ones have 95’s and they all walk in and use hand sanitizer before they touch their cart. I watch.
Occasionally I see the masked child. That one bothers me the most.
Honestly I think in my head these people are mentally ill.
I can't remember if I already posted this comment... Spoke with an older lady a few weeks ago. Told me her entire family was masked up and shot up to the hilt and they we're all "battling covid". She told me they were all recovering but, "we are really scared we're going to get sick again because the mask mandate was dropped in her area." My jaw hit the floor. We have a long road ahead of us.
Perfect illustration: Saw a young boy about six (with unmasked parent) wearing a black mask WITH NECK STRAP. Damage is real.
At least it makes identifying Trudeau voters easy.
Problem is there are a *LOT* of them where I live. But I can easily see MY people!!!!!!
At least the drug cartels don’t force you to take their drugs. Don’t get high on your own supply!
As Charles Murray said a few years back, we've become too concerned about being *nice* and we're not concerned enough about being *good*.
Masks are secular veils for those still wearing them.
The thing they kills me about the mask zealots are those who play the “you’re being cruel to the immunocompromised and people with cancer”... pre-Covid those things existed, we weren’t expected to mask up, and I rarely saw anyone masked. I find myself so angry at people wearing masks. It’s irrational anger, I know. They have been poisoned. But I’m angry just the same.
Excellent piece señor gato. The same concept seems to fit just as well with the current fad of denying the reality of men and women in order to make that very small percentage of people who suffer from gender dysphoria feel comfortable. Everyone knows that what the character Joseph in "Kindergarten Cop" said is true: "Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina." It truly is kindergarten-level knowledge. Yet people have been goaded into taking the stance that this fact, as old as the human race itself, is false. Now, even a supreme court nominee can't admit it and can't define what a "woman" is. Tell me this isn't an addiction.
I refused to wear a mask the entire time. In March 2020 I was still doing a radio show and was researching all things Covid, masks, social distancing, China, etc.
According to the BIG THREE, Lancet, NEJM and JAMA, masking was not EVER intended for airborne viruses. All three had research published as late at early April, 2020 that said precisely that. All three articles had many links to actual studies and research.
BUT...BUT!!! By May of 2020 all three had published retractions of sorts saying masks are essential to stopping the spread of the Wuhan Flu. HOWEVER, not a single one of the retractions had any scholarly links to research or studies of ANY KIND!!! I knew then, it was all a scam.
In the ensuing months I was thrown out of quite a few establishments but I held my ground. There was a time when my levels of anxiety were quite high but I knew I had to remain strong.
When I would engage folks with math, facts, etc. after the stupid questions about "are you a doctor" I would be faced with blank stares or with a response of why don't you do it to make other people comfortable?
Here is why. God calls us Christians to be salt and light in a dark and fallen world. I.e. To shout TRUTH from the highest mountaintops. Enabling fearful behavior isn't helping those who are fearful. That would be like enabling an addicted child by letting them use in my home.
Mass Formation Psychosis is REAL. Like the BAD CAT I predict that it will return with a vengeance. Just look at the public's reaction to Ukraine vs. Russia. Total pysop. And most folks have taken the bait; hook, line, sinker, rod, reel, fisherman, boat, trailer...ALL OF IT!!!
When will it return? Can anyone say "Midterm Elections"?
thing about junkies is that they don't live very long. there's a reason why it's called dope. seems safe to say that the hardcore muzzle addicts will line up for booster after booster until they're boostered to death. you can't play russian roulette - woops, sorry, ukrainian roulette - forever
"indoor mask requirements were finally lifted on puerto rico about 2 weeks ago. i was at the supermarket last week. there was no mask requirement."
Got a haircut here this morning. First time in 18 months I didn't have to mask up - no one inside was masked, either, which was encouraging - and first time in 18 months I didn't have to worry about the haircutter being careless and cutting the elastic on my THIS IS DUMB mask (which she had done twice in the past).
Costco, Supermax, PetSmart, Petco, post office, Marshalls, Stuffed Avocado, pro shop at Coco Beach, all the same.
But the cowardly fools at the Shipping Unlimited store at Garden Hills Plaza in Guaynabo still waved their arms like they were on the tarmac, landing a wayward plane, when I tried to enter maskless. Fools are still among us, and now I know they're addicts.
I would be smiling at you in your grocery store. Just because someone else had (has) on a mask doesn't make me feel as thought I should cover my face. I never had that "feeling" that I "should" for others' sake. Does that make me a (1.) selfish/bad person (2.) thinking person (3.) rebel ? Dunno. Don't care at this point.
We're blessed that we live in a state (NH...the "Live Free or Die" state) where we only had about a three month mandatory mask mandate and even though our cases surged once the vaccines started rolling out, our governor (who is pretty wishy washy) refused to re-introduce the mandate. That said, many towns instituted their own.
I almost never wore a mask and at times it was difficult to be the only person in an entire grocery store, for example, without a mask. Thankfully, I was never harassed like some of my friends, but it was hard to stand alone. My heart would be beeping hard the entire time I was in the store and I avoided eye contact and stay smiling while I shopped. (I was pretty excited when I made it back to the car without a confrontation! LOL!) And, yes, there were masked people at the front of the store, but I would just walk past them and not respond, and thankfully no one ever called the cops. LOL! (Actually, our governor said he would not enforce the mask mandate so..).
My kids had to wear them at work for a while and the most interesting thing happened...my youngest, who was an even bigger anti-masker than I am...started to say things like, "It's not that bad...I'm used to it..." It kind of freaked me out because you saw this change in attitude from someone who was very strongly against it to it not being that big of a deal. Thankfully, they don't need to wear them anymore but I can't imagine the mental issues this is going to cause young children who sit in masks all day at school. It's abusive and I struggle to not say something to unmasked adults I see out with their little masked children. It's a grotesque abuse of power, telling little impressionable children that they're going to kill grandma if they don't wear their useless mask.
I had a hairdresser tell me that her clients were "good people" because they masked up (I didn't). I told her that's a bad measure of whether someone is "good." Isn't it far better and more loving to tell someone the truth? This has been my mantra all along, I refuse to wear it because it gives people a false of security and I'm participating in lying about it's usefulness. It's better, and I would say right, to tell my neighbor the truth instead of supporting their delusion. The analogy of having a beer with an alcoholic because it makes them feel better is spot on.