> and this sort of flabbiness carries massive risks. i would never have believed that the world would go so quietly into lockdown sacrificing businesses and economic function, breaking education and society, leaving loved ones to die alone of despair. but it happened. and that’s some very dangerous failure.
Yeah, I clowned myself hard on that topic to a European friend at the start of Covid.
I live in a smallish town in SE NM where people were a bit more defiant about masks, lockdowns & the like in 2020. But the 1st time I went to Albuquerque after the state “locked down,” I was in such utter disbelief & despair at the virtually empty streets & people wearing masks as they drove alone or masked as they stood OUTSIDE in lines to get into grocery & big box stores. I was literally sobbing as I drove around, that the masses of asses were going along with it all. And then that behavior stretched into a couple of years, even where I lived, & I realized we’re screwed. There were too many who meekly complied with all of the nonsensical idiocy. WHO is already teeing up the next scam with this cruise ship hanta virus bullshit.
Hantavirus…wouldn’t it be fascinating if Baric or Daszac gain-of-functioned a virus transmitted from mouse turds into a human to human respiratory disease? Someone might check for a furin cleavage site.
The Washington Post has an article up today saying "it MAY have spread from person to person" which is highly unlikely unless you are intimate with someone who has it....trying to freak people out...smh
I find it interesting that we seem to be in the middle of an uptick in HIV and AIDS cases right now. I keep thinking of those furin cleavages and wonder if Geert Vander Bossche (sp?) was right after all.
I could also see those who were vaxxed being more susceptible to anything that comes down the pipe, especially respiratory viruses.
I was actually refused entry into a store here in Roswell. So as a form of protest from that day forward I made sure the mask left my nose free to spread Covid. It was my contribution to herd immunity.
Im in Roswell too. Which store? As I mentioned in my earlier comment, the town was more defiant at the start but as the scam went on, some places got w/ “the program” more than earlier. It was still better than Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Cruces.
this is why I kept very much to myself for almost 4 years... our small town (3000) was not too bad, except for 2 stores where I was not allowed without mask (one let me in with my large holes crochet shawl LOL) but the next over town was horrible. The grocery store where I used to shop denied me entrance. So I started shopping in the next small town over, where all they asked was to keep 'some' distance, which I consider just being polite. The worst was wal mart where they had closed off toys and a few other aisles. They gave out masks at the door, which I put on to go in and then hung round my neck, like lots of us did. And the non'believers churches, of course.
I too did not wear a mask. I saw the tyranny and Fauci lying bold faced to the American public. I lived under tyranny as a kid and as an adult decided to not bend the knee.
When approached I claimed the medical exception.....which was available to all because HIPPA law made it illegal to ASK what the medical condition.
I also was very disturbed by the lack of spine displayed by the very people and institutions who were supposed to defend the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
IMO, they pulled this off because of decades of "Trust the Experts, Trust Science".
I stopped trusting the experts as a young person, doubting what the doctor said, because a few made serious mistakes back then. Once bitten twice shy. At first I went along with the masks but very shortly after I read an article from the Canadian dentists that declared them useless. It was taken down quickly but after that, I refused to wear it.
Every ACLU money beg I get I tear everything up and send it back to them in the post paid envelope. I was a member a couple of decades ago. It’s absolutely ALL “help usget rid of Trump” . Every damn one of those beggar letters. Let’s investigate that lefty fraud organization too. Up every azz there needs a flash lite investigation. ASAP. See what they’re hiding.
yes, and a few others, considered not important. I was so flabbergasted (I am an avid jigsaw puzzler) I thought a child needs toys! I think the bicycles and camping gear were closed off too. It has been a while and I was so dumbfounded!
Yes, New Mexico. We vacationed there in the spring of 2021. We were at an ice cream store where people were eating ice cream sitting at tables with their masks pulled down, but I was forcefully told by the ice cream server to pull my mask up over my nose. Otherwise, no ice cream for me.
I have always called the NM “governor” Wuhan-Grisham (real name Lujan—Grisham) since 2020. She was every bit as bad & worse than the big bad blue states like NY, CA, MI, IL, ad nauseum.
NM used to be so wonderful, just like AZ. But 20+ years ago when I was living there, the change was already visible. Neighbors coming from New Jersey started fencing their properties, big dogs (that constantly escaped due to the soft sand), trying to grow a lawn in summer when it was forbidden to water. And when it rained heavily and the wash ran, those NJ wanted their sand back. Shortly after our marriage broke up and I only went back once, when the neighbors had pulled up the cacti (forbidden) and the night blooming cereus destroyed... on the Tube I saw the clip of a real estate agent, I could have cried. Desert paved over, full of luxury houses, horrible. By that time properties had tripled and quadrupled in price and NM was ruined as well.
I was born in Tucson (1958) & raised in Phx (1959-1976) & the whole state is a shell of what it was. Has been overtaken by California & midwestern assholes
I have seen this happen to so many "paradises". So many (too many) people find a paradise and then try to change it into the place where they came from.
To clarify, I was told that in order to be served ice cream I had to have a mask.,..but it was OK to be unmasked while eating the ice cream...I am a physician, the sheer idiocy of this approach made me crazy. As did the idea of mandatory vaccination...I've had a small pox vaccination...I'm not afraid of contracting smallpox. If the Covid vaccine was effective, and I got the vaccine, why should I be worried about being exposed to someone who had not been vaccinated?
Oh boy. I remember the masks that had a straw hole. Amazon had them too. I bought some masks that had a clear plastic square so you could see the mouth. I engineered taking the plastic out and wearing it wide open. Hardly anyone noticed. What a strange surreal time. They will have to tie me down (if they can catch me) to get a mask on me again. I’ll get a concealed carry if necessary.
I live in a small town (about 2k), and most stores weren't too worried about it; if you didn't mask, nobody tried to kick you out. The local liquor store posted a sign saying that all the employees were exempted for medical reasons and that if you weren't wearing a mask, they assumed you were too.
many were opposed to the lockdown, mask up, and jab, jab, jab histrionics and overreach, but how many really did anything vs "going along to get along?"
i know SO many people who got the shot because "well, i had to."
after the fact, everyone wakes up and realized how bad things went and changes jerseys and says "hey, i was opposed all along!" but they were not there when it counted. like france post ww2, is even 20% of the people who claim "my grandfather was in the resistance" were really in the resistance, they'd have turfed the germans out.
that's the problem. the open question is "how many people learned?" how many now have antibodies against appeasement because they see where appeasement lands you. i have a deep seated suspicion that a fair few people really woke up/changed. i suspect DEI and woke are on the run because covid forced long disused muscles back into daily practice and people now see the pattern.
What blows my mind, is 5 years later... people are STILL wearing masks. How can the information that I found early on in the scamdemic still be lost on these people? How is it that even as liberal outlets concede the folly that was, people still choose to bury their heads in the sand and (I'm sure) think that I am the idiot? I just feel that the allegiance to the left is something more insidious than I can comprehend. These people LOVED Elon Musk, now they HATE him. Even Trump was considered an ally, now he is the embodiment of Hitler. It's just difficult, as a reasonable human, to see how people I thought I knew, and even liked, have become something unrecognizable in 5 short years. Is our civilization really that far gone that all commonality has been lost?
On another note: I am proud of my resistance to the lockdowns and even went so far as to offer a "Friday afternoon club" at our shop to employees, customers, and friends when they closed the bars. I spoke to my employees about the fraud of masking and "6' for safety" from idiot bureaucrats. Happy to have been "that guy". I am proud to have trusted my instincts (I mean... we survived as a species for eons without basic hygiene and a singular virus was to be our undoing? Horse shit) but it seems we have educated our instincts away in a large swath of our civilization, and that makes me sad.
You exercised knowledge and reason. You were taught to do it.
I was taught: you will do it and like it, or else.
We can see here an unscientific probability of 50% were taught to think while others were taught to obey.
Now add on the paradigm Gato shared here: I am my Ideas. Propaganda to shame those who did not obey was POTENT for those who saw themselves as Ideas, rather than a Being who has ideas and able to choose their actions.
School is entirely about being taught to obey and accept dogma.
Doctors are the most schooled, and therefore have proved themselves the most obedient. This is why there was and still is so shockingly little pushback against outright insanity.
You can literally SEE that masks cannot possibly work. They fog your glasses for crissakes.
Just stunning that doctors continue to wear them. Discredits the entire medical profession in the most obvious way.
The failure of the mRNA jabs was also obvious to anyone who cared to notice who was getting sick.
I have a friend undergoing chemo. Her doctors, of course, told her to mask in public. She was so mortified that people would think she was a covid idiot, that she took a magic marker and wrote CHEMO on her mask! My how times have changed!
I'm sorry about your friend's problem, but masks definitely will not protect her in the least. In fact, they will simply impede her breathing without filtering out any virus.
She should just refuse, and look for a doctor that thinks a little bit.
Chemo is also a bad deal on average. Maybe 1% mortality reduction but terrible quality of life. My wife had breast cancer and simply refused chemo after doing a bit of research. That was 15 years ago and she's fine.
I could care less if people want to wear masks - that's their prerogative. The part that troubled me was the government at all levels compelling people to wear them, even though there was no strong evidence of efficacy. I happened to be familiar with the body of scientific evidence on masks, and I was stunned at the nonsense being spewed by supposed public health "experts".
I know 2 people who were talking about getting their updated “boosters” a week ago. I was tempted to tell them to quit taking that worthless & dangerous crap but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I deeply resented anyone who told me I should take the clot shot back in the day. So far be it from me to interfere with their bodily autonomy to keep taking it.
I hope you’re right though - that the tyranny of 2020 onward woke up a lot of morally flabby people. I’m sure something will come up pretty soon to test that.
When WHO changed the definition of achieving "herd immunity" to exclude natural infection. That injection was better than natural immunity? Ya gotta be kidding me. smh
Harmeet Dhillon is investigating UCLA Medical school for racial priority admission. So, your observation seems spot on. While MAHA was aimed at health and helped usher in Trump, without it, would we have such an investigation of a health institution? A health institution that Dr. Ladapo had worked at until (rumor has it) it was made increasingly uncomfortable.
Similar to "I was on campus during May 4, 1970 at Kent State " (I grew up there and so many in my High School class claimed they were there- no you weren't I saw you in school that day, and we were Juniors so weren't demonstrating on campus...) OR "Yeah I was at Woodstock"....pfffft! Why individuals do this is beyond me...
Very cool....71 here. Started the girls track & field and cross country program back then as there wasn't one. I hear it's still going strong! (my contribution)- I SHOULD have also been a SeaRider but the pool hadn't been built yet. :-) I miss Kent (at times)- great place to grow up.
Save the persistent overcast skies, it was pretty good. I drive by every now and again and make it a point to drive by TRSS, Davey, and stop at Ray’s place.
It might be even more complicated than that ("going along to get along?"). Like many others, I went along at first... no one knew what a novel virus might do. Everyone I knew was scared, but I continued to work, which involved going into peoples businesses and houses. By late February 2020 I knew or strongly suspected it was an air transmitted virus; that effectively meant that masks were useless, or at least nearly so. However, putting on a mask to go to the doctor or to enter someone's house because they said you have to did not feel like giving up liberty. In other cases it kind of did.
After I had the illness in November 2020, my doc tried to sell vax to me. When I told him I already had the virus he informed me I could get it again. My response was "I guess that makes me exactly like you," (who had the vax). In my case, refusal, if demanded, could have meant giving up other much needed medical service. Fortunately, he did not demand... there might have been a bit of rebellion in both of us.
In November 2021, I went to a Chicago concert in Springfield, Missouri where masks were "recommended." Almost no one near me was wearing one. The concert was sold out.
A few months later, I went to an Asleep at the Wheel concert in Fayetteville, Arkansas where the venue insisted that everyone must wear a mask at all times. It was not sold out, which was a bit surprising. I'm not sure if the mask connection can be made or not, but we found an exception to the mask rule. They were selling wine at the concession and while drinking it you could take the mask off. We each bought one glass of wine and spent the entire concert consuming it. :)
In my part of the world, these small cases of non-compliance were much more prevalent than either compliance or outright rebellion. However, quite a few hospital workers were fired for not vaxing; a few months later the hospitals were complaining about not having enough employees. Today, they still are.
“antibodies against appeasement” is the Gato phrase to remember and broadcast, and that -for me- truly consolidates the lessons learned from the whole Covid/lockdown+masks powergrab. Thank you, EGM
I guess it depends on what you mean by valid. Was there fraud in the voting process? I’m not sure. But plenty of people voted for him, especially the AWFLs. Is he a fraud as a candidate? Most likely.
I got the original covid in March 2020, very mild for me. Although I did lose my sense of smell for 7 days, 100% gone. I never got tested to confirm, why bother. Besides, 5 days before I came down with it, a man was violently coughing and hacking in the grocery store right next to me, so I figure that's where I got it, I've never seen someone so sick in a store before (shame on him for shopping while that ill!). When I lost my smell I knew what it was. Then my husband got it from me, much worse. He tested and next thing I knew, the county nurse called and told me to stay home for 14 days. I said NO. That I'd already had it and gave it to my husband. She fought with me and then I politely ended the conversation. I could not believe the crap I got from most of my friends, saying, you need to get vaccinated anyway. It was mind blowing. I ignored them and lost a couple of very old friends. Too bad for them. I don't think any of those friends learned anything. I know this is anecdotal, but I bet it's true for many people who are like me. And the funny thing is, they are all liberals. None of my conservative friends were like this, they were combative like I was in many ways, including defying the mask directive.
Has anyone noticed that we now have a booster shot season where all the boosted are catching any opportunistic viruses, cooking them up in their compromised bodies and sharing them with each other.
Things were better here, since our laws prohibits and outright forbids the kind of stuff they did in Austria, Australia and UK f.e., so my uncharacteristically hopeful tone is coloured by that of course.
How many learned, I'm afraid will be decided by how the US polity swings. If things change due sanity (ind. of party affiliations) on various levels, the GATGA-crowd will swing in the same direction.
@Rikard- my son goes to Walmart regularly. He would never wear a mask. He'd be stopped and told he had to have one on. He'd say "No, I don't. It's not a law." then proceed in. They never stopped him, either because they knew he was right or because they were too uneducated to figure out what he was saying.
Same where I was. We did not mask, we did not follow the arrows on the floor and we never changed our lives one iota. Fortunately, there are many like minded people where I live. I was never told to leave any store, ever, and I did my own in person shopping. What we DID do was bone up on the real science (not “The Science”) and take our supplements. No one in my immediate family got Covid, despite having very close contact with those who tested positive immediately after spending time with us. So, no, we didn’t play last time, and we won’t play thus time either!
I had been walking all the WM aisles that were open when someone pointed at the arrows on the floor. Obviously I had been walking 'the wrong way' all along. I just laughed and kept going the wrong way!
I had a young stock person point out the arrows to me at one point and my response was "are you kidding?"
I was in a drugstore in NJ (Cresskill) big store that was part of a nationwide chain on another day. I was unmasked and a man did that intimidation thing (going toe to toe with me and leaning over me) telling me to wear my mask. I lifted my head to face him and said "no".
Suddenly, things shifted and he turned and tried to walk away quickly, with me right on his heels until he practically ran out the door.
I used it as a teaching opportunity for my daughter. We went to a store first and it had signs up that we had to wear masks. I told her we wouldn’t wear them and just see what happened.Nothing happened. Later we had to go to the hospital in a college town so they were pretty serious about the masks. We did the same thing, we didn’t wear the masks and an employee did say something but we just said we didn’t have to wear them and we moved on. Again, nothing happened.
When I had to go to the emergency room in '21, The security guy demanded I keep my mask up properly. Meanwhile they had an illiterate lady with suspected MRSA in her hand/arm wandering around the place trying to hand her phone off to people because she couldn't read the texts from her doctor.
That could well be true. Protests about “vaccines”, lockdowns, masks etc not only didn’t get the press (politically incorrect) but were heavily criticized for “endangering” others. While deeply destructive & politically correct BLM riots were enthusiastically endorsed by the AMA & politicians. Apparently the BLM riots were immune to the ‘Rona.
Apparently, the virus was very selective in how it infected people. You know, you were safe unmasked if you were seated, eating, but God forbid if you stood up to leave or use the facilities! How people did not see how ludicrous this was is beyond me!
when you see these tube clips now, they are hilarious. a family all masked goes into a restaurant, sits down and takes the masks off. Have a glass with something in it, unmasked. Soon is glass is empty, mask again. Goes to bathroom puts mask on, eat, then goes out all masked again. People playing flute with a mask with a hole cut in it. Musicians all masked, but of course the singers cannot.
Seriously, when you look back on the idiocy to which we’re subjected, it’s absolutely unbelievable - probably even to the demons who dreamt it all up & implemented it.
It’s why I was so upset the 1st time I went to a big city & it seemed like at least 75%+ compliance w/ “policies” that made no sense, contradicted each other &/or were morally & ethically bankrupt.
Believe it or not… I got kicked out of an Apple Store because I would not mask up. Immediately after that, I watched an African-American woman walk into the store with no mask, and they never said a single word to her… maybe I should have worn some darker make up and screamed racist or something… 🙄
Same. Utterly shocking. I just thought there's was no way. I honestly think the Patriot Act was conditioning. I should've thought about that before I thought Americans wouldn't put up with it.
Silly me.
Most were just terrified, BUT where most of my anger came from is those who knew better didn't have the courage to speak out because they didn't want to upset anyone or be viewed as a "disruptor.
I guess decorum is important when falling into an abyss, apparently.
I'm thinking this new hantavirus maybe the next "midterm" psyop.
For one reason:
Moderna has been collaborating with the Korea University Vaccine Innovation Center (VIC-K) since 2024 to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for hantavirus.
If doctors, pharmacists & real experts in related fields had just stood up & said none of this makes any sense & is absolutely not scientifically or ethically based, none of this could have happened. Alas, they were & are more captured than the average person.
I gave it a try - but no one listened. That is where I kept away from all, and let them sudder in their own broth. In the meanwhile I just lived a quiet life in my cabin in the woods, with the dog and the cats, and the birds singing. Thankfully my very small neighborhood did not seem infected by the fear mongering.
I live south of Tucson in a more rural/suburban area and visited friends and relatives in Calif. in the fall of 2020 and it sure was different there. Got yelled at in a sporting goods store for not having my mask pulled up fully...I told him "I am from Arizona, we don't do that there." I probably would have gotten escorted out had I not pulled up my "fake mask" that I made that didn't do diddly squat...wonder if that kid ever thinks about how "moral" he was back then?
These people are more wicked and evil than intelligent. Utilizing the VERY SAME PATTERNS and expecting the general public to not recognize them is to shoot themselves in the foot.
This form of propaganda will appear repeatedly because it works....and it makes the rubes angry if one has the principled response to stand against the propaganda. Remember fear porn was used to involve the U.S. in every war of the 20th century, as well as the climate change scam, the AIDS debacle (in which Fauci was the major player) and on and on. The other thing that this strategy does is to divide and conquer various groups instead of allowing individuals to ascertain who the real bad actors are.
The absolutely bizarre thing (at least it seems bizarre to me although I’m no jab expert) is hantavirus appears in Pfizer’s post-authorization safety analysis for BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech’s internal development code for the COVID shot) lists “Hantavirus pulmonary infection” as one of the company’s adverse events of special interest.😳🤔
What does hantavirus have to do with the Covid-19 shots? I’m sure it’s something innocuous.
this was my response to those developing the shot for Hantavirus...guess I put it in the wrong spot....and totally agree with what you said above. I put my primary care doc right up there as he was probably operating from getting $ for pushing shots. I kept saying no...to everything and still do. He doesn't even ask me about any kind of shots/meds anymore.... :- ). Sorry for the confusion!
@Warmek- not only did they put up with it but many embraced it. Those are the ones who want others to think for them. I can't live that way. I've been accused online of being a know-it-all. No, I don't know it all but I AM a critical thinker.
not "every single" -- our WI Senator Ron Johnson has been one of the very few but vocal and tireless "lawmakers" who has pushed and investigated and exposed much of the rot from the very beginning. and the exposure he has given the vaccine injured is without compare
Yeah, that was the year I realized they weren't worth voting for. They and the Greens. Both of them and Sanders wasted the 2020 campaign recycling all their old arguments pretending it was the 1980s, and proving their lack of leadership by ignoring the elephant in the room.
DeSantis went along with it, too, at first. Check me on it, but I believe Noem was the first governor to open up, though SD is small enough it didn't make the news anywhere. There were several like the worthless Holcomb who, while they did not implement mandates, put the onus on counties and cities to implement their own mandates.
My understanding was that Noem didn't even shut the state down, she just left it up to her constituents. DeSantis did a second round of shutdowns in July-ish if I'm remembering right before capitalizing on the publicity of standing up to the Covid BS. Eventually, he left it up to the counties and cities, which was funny since the county right across the state line in AL dropped their mask requirements long before my county in FL did.
I'd have to go back and look, but I think she ordered the meat packing plants closed for a while. But other than that, yeah, I think she was pretty good. The Resses still closed, and that was their call, sort of, but she should have required them to not block state and federal roads. A couple of cities went nuts, too, as did some of the larger businesses.
True. But, he had the courage to come out and stand up against the entire machine after just a few months. He also said he was wrong, which is immensely respected.
Im not taking anything away from Noem, but it's one thing to buck the machine when you have an entire state thats essentially rural, republican and only 900k population vs. Florida being mostly urban, deep purple (at the time) and 24 million population.
With the exception of Dave Smith, Tom Woods, Scott Horton and I’m sure a few others I don’t know, the libertarian party was quick to learn the goose step; they can all go fuck all.
There is a misperception that because we disagree we are somehow experts. I never claimed to be an expert. When people's cars break down and they say "my car broke down," no one shoots back "you aren't a car mechanic, how do you know?"
It depended on where you were geographically. Flyoverlandia was mostly sane. I drove cross country maybe six months into the lockdowns and small town America didn’t wear masks or anything to any appreciable degree. But get into the hear of a big city and they were everywhere. I also went to the March for Life in DC the same year and DC proper was worlds different to Alexandra where my groups hotel was.
I dunno. That was not my experience. I drove a tractor trailer for most of 2020 and 2021. I hit 47 of 48 states in CONUS. Most places made me mask up. Now, I'll grant, these were typically corporations, either at the "truck stop" side, or the "shipper and receiver" side. So maybe they were just mitigating legal risk. But for damned near two years, I didn't talk to anyone in person who wasn't a cashier, a shipper, a receiver, or someone sitting in the truck parked next to me.
Yes, that makes sense, I went to a retreat where at the retreat proper they made people mask up, but the satellite city of Chicago it was held in didn’t appear to know a lockdown was going on when I went to get some Chinese food off site.
I followed a bunch of people from the Anti-Guardian over to another site and then onto substack. There were several Europeans in the bunch and I kept assuring them that Americans would not put up with the Covid circus and Americans would resist the flood of illegal immigration, etc.
Hoo Boy. I'm still eating that damn crow for leftovers.
Tolentino's wealthy family has been convicted for fraud and human trafficking, and Piker - a wealthy nepo-bolshi who wears $2000 Cartier jewelry while posing reading Lenin's works - is also from a wealthy family whose grandparents were cousins. So....why the *fuck* does anyone listen to or read these two sewer rats?
It's interesting that the world's leading Leftists are in the main products of wealthy, highly educated families. People so evidently hateful of family and economic prosperity, yet who cling to their own with a tenacity of white on rice...
marxism is the modal outcome of the super privileged who hate their dad.
all it takes is the wealth to hold outlandishly expensive luxury beliefs and a simmer resentment against the fact that your useless life depends upon the largesse of your parents.
you want the station you were born into, but lack the talent and application to learn it so you go for "next best thing" which is "demanding to be given power and privilege for your ideas instead of your accomplishments."
it's the opiate of the shiftlessly entitled.
marxism is just the rich children of VC's who cribbed a bad business plan demanding to be rewarded as though they had built a thriving business.
It's the difference between growing up experiencing lack & want, of and for basic stuff, and growing up thinking you're poor because your parents didn't take you to Val d'Isére /and/ Chamonix during Winter holidays.
The former may grow up learning Marxist economic theory but will defer to reality first anyway; the latter will grow up thinking if you point at it and want it loudly enough, it will manifest for you.
In the old days it was "off to the colonies with you, son". The scions of wealthy families really had no excuse for lack of achievement. They may have complained, but the family money usually provided too much comfort to leave behind.
I think it goes back to Schumpeter - glad to be corrected - that said that capitalism's utility and efficiency is such that it creates a surplus of labour and capital and an entire class who benefits from it, while not producing anything of value. And so you see grifting turds like Tolentino and Piker - products of this surplus wealth - performatively shit on capitalism and free markets while being the beneficiaries of them.
“And so you see grifting turds like Tolentino and Piker - products of this surplus wealth - “
The Professional Managerial class that thinks they know what’s best. Not some common Joe off the street, spouting nonsense. They claim moral authority.
They discuss “microlooting” and social murder without conscience.
Pretty sure that wasn't Schumpeter, he of the "creative destruction" school of economic advancement. Maybe David Graeber, Thorstein Veblen or Herbert Marcuse - staunch critics of capitalism...
He (the Piker) also gives his dog electrical shocks, don't forget.
I sometimes wish he'd visit Sweden. He could get written up for animal abuse, and would if so possibly be sentenced to prison.
And in our prisons (which are rather comfy as prisons go) being a loudmouthed braggart is about the biggest no-no there is, coming in at first place after molesters and people abusing the elderly.
As has been covered here before, it's not a long reach to conclude, if you respond to words with violence, and keep on with your insistence that the rest of the world accommodate your delusions, the rest of the world will eventually skip the words and initiate with violence next time your actions collide their peaceful lives. The deluded feel the same way of course, but they are so massively outnumbered and out resourced by those who just want to get to the grocery store and watch a football game that they'll be immediately swamped should the otherwise disinterested masses actually be roused.
I thought closing schools, making grandpa die alone, inflating currency, and ruining health care to enrich themselves might do it... alas.
As we get ready to celebrate 250 years of freedom, we need to ask ourselves if we are truly free.
If you made an average of 40k a year (and that’s well below the average annual American salary of approximately 61K) and invested the annual Social Security taxes forcefully taken out of our paycheck at $2,480.00 a year, after 40 years, you would have approximately $1,209,111.00 in principal, with dividends of approximately 50K a year.
How can we claim to be free when we can’t even invest our hard-earned dollars as we choose? The Amish can fill out form 4029 and not pay social security and medicare since they are from “a recognized religious group that has existed continuously since December 31, 1950.”
@Liz- my sister worked for a VA hospital in Florida. BEcause she was a federal employee, SS was NOT taken out of her check. She had to invest on her own.
She was likely on the old federal system and they had GREAT benefits! It has changed. But if she worked 36 quarters outside of the fed gov't, she is eligible for SS benefits.....at her highest pay from the Fed Gov't. Ask me how I know this.
Yes, I've talked to a few federal workers about this.
It's quite ironic and I'm no fan of irony. They have relatively good salaries, good pensions and great medical benefits and they don't have to pay into SS like the rest of us.
Just off the top of my head, my ungovernability happens mostly in my car, I think. I speed. I make U-turns where I shouldn't (though NEVER on a highway). I park where I shouldn't, though I stay with the car and more than once have had to explain to the authorities the differences between stopping, standing, and parking. I'll run a red if I'm sitting there for too long and CLEARLY no one is within a country mile of the intersection.
Then again, I refused the jab from the get-go, I refused to wear a mask unless forced to (and then took it off when that authority figure disappeared) and got into more than one animated exchange with a Karen (Virginia Beach, I'm thinking of you; Bayamon Costco, you too).
Sounds pretty lame in writing! But "don't tell me what to do" is my overall governing principle, and in no small part probably why I've been self-employed since 1992.
"where people yell at you for jaywalking across an empty street is indeed a stupid and a flabby place."
That's Switzerland! I've had several late Saturday nights over the years on visits to both both Zurich and Geneva when, walking (kind of) back to my Hotel at 1-2AM on completely deserted streets, the locals STILL wait for the lights to change to cross. And look at you as though you are a criminal for not "complying". Still, it's always good for a laugh.
@Philipat- I grew up in a small town in New York. Husband grew up in the suburbs of a small city (we live in the house his parents built). Neither of us were subjected to the crossing signals as kids. We're elderly adults and I STILL have no clue how to figure them out. He kind of does. So we cross when there are no cars coming, just like old times!
The most rabid fanatics are often just paid shills. Sometimes they are bots. Or they are lemmings following paid shills and bots. Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. Ideology is a shallow substitute but suffices. Depth and virtue are more worthy goals and more rare.
When hate enhancements became a thing, I knew we were on dangerous ground, but I had no clue how dangerous it would become. Motive was already taken into account for crimes, so why enhancements for those thoughts and creating a hierarchy? If someone kills a family member, is there really solace that it wasn't based on a hate category? I think killing someone for the joy of it seems pretty hateful. Fast forward to BLM, which taught us that physical violence for right speech is okay, and wrong speech with no violence is a big no-no. So now stealing from a grocery stuff is right action because it hits a business already on thin profit margins which then passes the losses it on to the general public. Why not go shoplift your new iphone? I think those profit margins are more in sync with the ideology. Decades ago an Israeli friend said she didn't feel safe in our grocery stores because there was no armed security. I told her I wouldn't feel safe it our grocery stores. Well here we are today with SWAT looking security that mill about but actually can't do anything because they are prohibited from doing so. They are just there as a faint reminder of what burly men used to do when crime happened. Thankfully TJs hasn't joined in. Somehow have a trust worthy atmosphere seems to work.
I can't help but wonder if the flattening of identitarian beliefs has seeped into our own personal worlds as we drive. Years ago, it was only the young drivers with fun cars that blew through neighborhood stop signs. Since the weekly protests in SoCal, that practice has shifted to a wider range of drivers. Now the old gray-haired lady blows through, as does the construction worker and gardener. The last two used to be the most polite drivers. I knew when they joined in we were screwed.
I was in a Grand Prairie, TX, grocery store in February 2021 when the windmill electricity was intermittent. Everybody was civilizationally behaved, and there were no armed guards.
Everyone sighed a audible breath of relief when the lights came back on. But until then, people used their phone's flashlight to get around.
This political left movement does have a crack. Most of these characters clamoring about their moral superiority and promoting violence against dissenters won't actually engage in physical violence themselves. They talk a big game when they are surrounded by their like minded comrades, but individually, most wouldn't risk any kind of physical confrontation. This is partly why they champion collectivism. Because as individuals they are mentally and physically weak.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I saw in 2016 the "speech is violence - violence is speech" ridiculous notion, but the version I saw was "disagreement is hate." And there has been a lot of absurd upending of reality. Such as thinking that not wearing a mask is considered "fragile."
On X, I interacted with someone who I will call "Beetle" We got into it because of masking.
Daily, I will scroll through my algorithm and find a post about masking and all I will leave is some variation of "masks do not work." I do not denigrate the person making the post, I simply leave that as a constant reminder to counter what I speculate (I could be wrong), virtue signalling wearing a mask in a world where so few people adopt such a practice in 2026.
The irony is these same people who consider it a mark of virtue to mask still when so many do not, were most likely the first to pile onto those few who did not mask in grocery stores back in 2020.
Long story short. Beetle then degenerated into ad hominem attacks and other logical fallacies, and then doxxed me, and threatened to call personal friends/family/businesses regarding my posts on X, which gave me no choice but to warn people that someone from X might be contacting them.
My account, which used to have my actual name, was changed as a result because I naively believed people would act in good faith.
These people who have rationalized their actions do indeed see disagreement as harassment and feel completely vindicated in harassing others. Beetle has since blocked me, yet continues to follow and interact with others who respond to me urging them to not engage.
I wasn't and he attempted to use that against me. He rationalized it by saying I was a "public figure," which had me in a laughing fit for a good five minutes.
If my loved one were dying and someone tried to make them die alone by preventing me from being with them when they died, two people would've died that day.
No no, I'm only speculating on what I would do, or what I hope I would do, to anyone who might've tried to stop me from seeing a dying loved one. Whether from a baseball bat or a 9mm or anything in between, I hope I would've done right by my loved one.
Well, yes. But it started a long long time ago, didn't it? A really long time ago.
To mature is to discover within oneself the capacity to do the right thing, and refrain from doing the wrong thing, because you recognize what each of those things may be and not because the security guard has his eye on you throughout your shopping adventure.
That fine moment (in the book; the movies are just awful) when Galadriel says "I passed the test"--we all need to pass our own tests and teach our children to do so also. That's how you maintain as much of a healthy society as we're able to do at any period in time.
This is true for every choice for the entire course of your life. What's so astonishing these days of everyone being able to have an audience is how many people in their thirties and older remain toddlers to their cores and the people who might rebuke them have remained toddlers too.
> and this sort of flabbiness carries massive risks. i would never have believed that the world would go so quietly into lockdown sacrificing businesses and economic function, breaking education and society, leaving loved ones to die alone of despair. but it happened. and that’s some very dangerous failure.
Yeah, I clowned myself hard on that topic to a European friend at the start of Covid.
"Oh, Americans will *never* put up with that."
Boy was I wrong... *sigh*
I live in a smallish town in SE NM where people were a bit more defiant about masks, lockdowns & the like in 2020. But the 1st time I went to Albuquerque after the state “locked down,” I was in such utter disbelief & despair at the virtually empty streets & people wearing masks as they drove alone or masked as they stood OUTSIDE in lines to get into grocery & big box stores. I was literally sobbing as I drove around, that the masses of asses were going along with it all. And then that behavior stretched into a couple of years, even where I lived, & I realized we’re screwed. There were too many who meekly complied with all of the nonsensical idiocy. WHO is already teeing up the next scam with this cruise ship hanta virus bullshit.
Hantavirus…wouldn’t it be fascinating if Baric or Daszac gain-of-functioned a virus transmitted from mouse turds into a human to human respiratory disease? Someone might check for a furin cleavage site.
Check this out. You’ll never guess who has been working on an mRNA hantavirus vaccine… https://x.com/JoshWalkos/status/2052040272498827510
😳
When I was hoping that someone would "Make it make sense". This was not what I was hoping for, not at all.
The Washington Post has an article up today saying "it MAY have spread from person to person" which is highly unlikely unless you are intimate with someone who has it....trying to freak people out...smh
Well... they WERE on a cruise. ;)
of course it did. BS pushers
I find it interesting that we seem to be in the middle of an uptick in HIV and AIDS cases right now. I keep thinking of those furin cleavages and wonder if Geert Vander Bossche (sp?) was right after all.
I could also see those who were vaxxed being more susceptible to anything that comes down the pipe, especially respiratory viruses.
I was actually refused entry into a store here in Roswell. So as a form of protest from that day forward I made sure the mask left my nose free to spread Covid. It was my contribution to herd immunity.
Im in Roswell too. Which store? As I mentioned in my earlier comment, the town was more defiant at the start but as the scam went on, some places got w/ “the program” more than earlier. It was still better than Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Cruces.
That’s because Hades is better than ABQ. SC or Cruces.
Lived in Las Cruces for a while, really liked it. It was my transition to a 'smaller town' after living in/around cities for much of my life.
Nowadays, my little town of 2k feels too big... lol
Big 5.
this is why I kept very much to myself for almost 4 years... our small town (3000) was not too bad, except for 2 stores where I was not allowed without mask (one let me in with my large holes crochet shawl LOL) but the next over town was horrible. The grocery store where I used to shop denied me entrance. So I started shopping in the next small town over, where all they asked was to keep 'some' distance, which I consider just being polite. The worst was wal mart where they had closed off toys and a few other aisles. They gave out masks at the door, which I put on to go in and then hung round my neck, like lots of us did. And the non'believers churches, of course.
I too did not wear a mask. I saw the tyranny and Fauci lying bold faced to the American public. I lived under tyranny as a kid and as an adult decided to not bend the knee.
When approached I claimed the medical exception.....which was available to all because HIPPA law made it illegal to ASK what the medical condition.
I also was very disturbed by the lack of spine displayed by the very people and institutions who were supposed to defend the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
IMO, they pulled this off because of decades of "Trust the Experts, Trust Science".
I stopped trusting the experts as a young person, doubting what the doctor said, because a few made serious mistakes back then. Once bitten twice shy. At first I went along with the masks but very shortly after I read an article from the Canadian dentists that declared them useless. It was taken down quickly but after that, I refused to wear it.
Every ACLU money beg I get I tear everything up and send it back to them in the post paid envelope. I was a member a couple of decades ago. It’s absolutely ALL “help usget rid of Trump” . Every damn one of those beggar letters. Let’s investigate that lefty fraud organization too. Up every azz there needs a flash lite investigation. ASAP. See what they’re hiding.
they closed off the toy aisles?
yes, and a few others, considered not important. I was so flabbergasted (I am an avid jigsaw puzzler) I thought a child needs toys! I think the bicycles and camping gear were closed off too. It has been a while and I was so dumbfounded!
My Walmart handed out those N95 masks one day. I took one, fingered it some, breathed on it and threw it in the bin near the gal handing it out.
Yes, New Mexico. We vacationed there in the spring of 2021. We were at an ice cream store where people were eating ice cream sitting at tables with their masks pulled down, but I was forcefully told by the ice cream server to pull my mask up over my nose. Otherwise, no ice cream for me.
I have always called the NM “governor” Wuhan-Grisham (real name Lujan—Grisham) since 2020. She was every bit as bad & worse than the big bad blue states like NY, CA, MI, IL, ad nauseum.
NM used to be so wonderful, just like AZ. But 20+ years ago when I was living there, the change was already visible. Neighbors coming from New Jersey started fencing their properties, big dogs (that constantly escaped due to the soft sand), trying to grow a lawn in summer when it was forbidden to water. And when it rained heavily and the wash ran, those NJ wanted their sand back. Shortly after our marriage broke up and I only went back once, when the neighbors had pulled up the cacti (forbidden) and the night blooming cereus destroyed... on the Tube I saw the clip of a real estate agent, I could have cried. Desert paved over, full of luxury houses, horrible. By that time properties had tripled and quadrupled in price and NM was ruined as well.
I was born in Tucson (1958) & raised in Phx (1959-1976) & the whole state is a shell of what it was. Has been overtaken by California & midwestern assholes
I lived just north of Tucson 2003-2004.
I have seen this happen to so many "paradises". So many (too many) people find a paradise and then try to change it into the place where they came from.
And the one that’s from zing to win is even worse. Dumbass Indian.
To clarify, I was told that in order to be served ice cream I had to have a mask.,..but it was OK to be unmasked while eating the ice cream...I am a physician, the sheer idiocy of this approach made me crazy. As did the idea of mandatory vaccination...I've had a small pox vaccination...I'm not afraid of contracting smallpox. If the Covid vaccine was effective, and I got the vaccine, why should I be worried about being exposed to someone who had not been vaccinated?
What technology did you use to eat the ice cream? Did you bring a blender to puree it? Did you have a special mask with a straw insert?
don't bring them to the idea LOL
Bought a self licking ice cream cone….
Oh boy. I remember the masks that had a straw hole. Amazon had them too. I bought some masks that had a clear plastic square so you could see the mouth. I engineered taking the plastic out and wearing it wide open. Hardly anyone noticed. What a strange surreal time. They will have to tie me down (if they can catch me) to get a mask on me again. I’ll get a concealed carry if necessary.
I live in a small town (about 2k), and most stores weren't too worried about it; if you didn't mask, nobody tried to kick you out. The local liquor store posted a sign saying that all the employees were exempted for medical reasons and that if you weren't wearing a mask, they assumed you were too.
But there will be more attempts to do it again...
..because we didn't hang them the first time.
🎯
Well, it's not like we're not already *familiar* with Hantavirus here in NM. Also Yersina Pestis.
As a European, I feel I have to say this:
"#notallamericans"
I think more of you (and us too) protested than we are aware of, since there's only ever a minority of any group that is seen or heard.
i think it's a bit more complex.
many were opposed to the lockdown, mask up, and jab, jab, jab histrionics and overreach, but how many really did anything vs "going along to get along?"
i know SO many people who got the shot because "well, i had to."
after the fact, everyone wakes up and realized how bad things went and changes jerseys and says "hey, i was opposed all along!" but they were not there when it counted. like france post ww2, is even 20% of the people who claim "my grandfather was in the resistance" were really in the resistance, they'd have turfed the germans out.
that's the problem. the open question is "how many people learned?" how many now have antibodies against appeasement because they see where appeasement lands you. i have a deep seated suspicion that a fair few people really woke up/changed. i suspect DEI and woke are on the run because covid forced long disused muscles back into daily practice and people now see the pattern.
time will tell.
What blows my mind, is 5 years later... people are STILL wearing masks. How can the information that I found early on in the scamdemic still be lost on these people? How is it that even as liberal outlets concede the folly that was, people still choose to bury their heads in the sand and (I'm sure) think that I am the idiot? I just feel that the allegiance to the left is something more insidious than I can comprehend. These people LOVED Elon Musk, now they HATE him. Even Trump was considered an ally, now he is the embodiment of Hitler. It's just difficult, as a reasonable human, to see how people I thought I knew, and even liked, have become something unrecognizable in 5 short years. Is our civilization really that far gone that all commonality has been lost?
On another note: I am proud of my resistance to the lockdowns and even went so far as to offer a "Friday afternoon club" at our shop to employees, customers, and friends when they closed the bars. I spoke to my employees about the fraud of masking and "6' for safety" from idiot bureaucrats. Happy to have been "that guy". I am proud to have trusted my instincts (I mean... we survived as a species for eons without basic hygiene and a singular virus was to be our undoing? Horse shit) but it seems we have educated our instincts away in a large swath of our civilization, and that makes me sad.
You exercised knowledge and reason. You were taught to do it.
I was taught: you will do it and like it, or else.
We can see here an unscientific probability of 50% were taught to think while others were taught to obey.
Now add on the paradigm Gato shared here: I am my Ideas. Propaganda to shame those who did not obey was POTENT for those who saw themselves as Ideas, rather than a Being who has ideas and able to choose their actions.
I'm proud of you, too.
School is entirely about being taught to obey and accept dogma.
Doctors are the most schooled, and therefore have proved themselves the most obedient. This is why there was and still is so shockingly little pushback against outright insanity.
You can literally SEE that masks cannot possibly work. They fog your glasses for crissakes.
Just stunning that doctors continue to wear them. Discredits the entire medical profession in the most obvious way.
The failure of the mRNA jabs was also obvious to anyone who cared to notice who was getting sick.
I saw an old guy in a car by himself with a mask on just this morning on the commute.
And he had it pulled down under his nose.
Make it make sense.
Here's the right response to idiots wearing masks: Look them in the eyes, then look down and shake your head.
No need to say anything.
They will know that they have failed as autonomous human beings.
I have a friend undergoing chemo. Her doctors, of course, told her to mask in public. She was so mortified that people would think she was a covid idiot, that she took a magic marker and wrote CHEMO on her mask! My how times have changed!
I'm sorry about your friend's problem, but masks definitely will not protect her in the least. In fact, they will simply impede her breathing without filtering out any virus.
She should just refuse, and look for a doctor that thinks a little bit.
Chemo is also a bad deal on average. Maybe 1% mortality reduction but terrible quality of life. My wife had breast cancer and simply refused chemo after doing a bit of research. That was 15 years ago and she's fine.
I could care less if people want to wear masks - that's their prerogative. The part that troubled me was the government at all levels compelling people to wear them, even though there was no strong evidence of efficacy. I happened to be familiar with the body of scientific evidence on masks, and I was stunned at the nonsense being spewed by supposed public health "experts".
I know 2 people who were talking about getting their updated “boosters” a week ago. I was tempted to tell them to quit taking that worthless & dangerous crap but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I deeply resented anyone who told me I should take the clot shot back in the day. So far be it from me to interfere with their bodily autonomy to keep taking it.
I hope you’re right though - that the tyranny of 2020 onward woke up a lot of morally flabby people. I’m sure something will come up pretty soon to test that.
I realized it the day they changed the definition of a vaccine. I was 80% sure it was all BS but that day made it 100% for me.
BINGO!
When WHO changed the definition of achieving "herd immunity" to exclude natural infection. That injection was better than natural immunity? Ya gotta be kidding me. smh
Harmeet Dhillon is investigating UCLA Medical school for racial priority admission. So, your observation seems spot on. While MAHA was aimed at health and helped usher in Trump, without it, would we have such an investigation of a health institution? A health institution that Dr. Ladapo had worked at until (rumor has it) it was made increasingly uncomfortable.
Similar to "I was on campus during May 4, 1970 at Kent State " (I grew up there and so many in my High School class claimed they were there- no you weren't I saw you in school that day, and we were Juniors so weren't demonstrating on campus...) OR "Yeah I was at Woodstock"....pfffft! Why individuals do this is beyond me...
Shout out to the fellow “rough rider”!
Although ’85.
Very cool....71 here. Started the girls track & field and cross country program back then as there wasn't one. I hear it's still going strong! (my contribution)- I SHOULD have also been a SeaRider but the pool hadn't been built yet. :-) I miss Kent (at times)- great place to grow up.
Well done! Had at least one girlfriend in CC.
Save the persistent overcast skies, it was pretty good. I drive by every now and again and make it a point to drive by TRSS, Davey, and stop at Ray’s place.
It might be even more complicated than that ("going along to get along?"). Like many others, I went along at first... no one knew what a novel virus might do. Everyone I knew was scared, but I continued to work, which involved going into peoples businesses and houses. By late February 2020 I knew or strongly suspected it was an air transmitted virus; that effectively meant that masks were useless, or at least nearly so. However, putting on a mask to go to the doctor or to enter someone's house because they said you have to did not feel like giving up liberty. In other cases it kind of did.
After I had the illness in November 2020, my doc tried to sell vax to me. When I told him I already had the virus he informed me I could get it again. My response was "I guess that makes me exactly like you," (who had the vax). In my case, refusal, if demanded, could have meant giving up other much needed medical service. Fortunately, he did not demand... there might have been a bit of rebellion in both of us.
In November 2021, I went to a Chicago concert in Springfield, Missouri where masks were "recommended." Almost no one near me was wearing one. The concert was sold out.
A few months later, I went to an Asleep at the Wheel concert in Fayetteville, Arkansas where the venue insisted that everyone must wear a mask at all times. It was not sold out, which was a bit surprising. I'm not sure if the mask connection can be made or not, but we found an exception to the mask rule. They were selling wine at the concession and while drinking it you could take the mask off. We each bought one glass of wine and spent the entire concert consuming it. :)
In my part of the world, these small cases of non-compliance were much more prevalent than either compliance or outright rebellion. However, quite a few hospital workers were fired for not vaxing; a few months later the hospitals were complaining about not having enough employees. Today, they still are.
“antibodies against appeasement” is the Gato phrase to remember and broadcast, and that -for me- truly consolidates the lessons learned from the whole Covid/lockdown+masks powergrab. Thank you, EGM
True but people learn and forget. Look at NYC electing a Muslim socialist mayor.
Are you really believeing that any election is valid in a place like that?
I think I see a Kamala Harris-type "ruling" the City while the Govenor et all maintain power over the Mayor.
I guess it depends on what you mean by valid. Was there fraud in the voting process? I’m not sure. But plenty of people voted for him, especially the AWFLs. Is he a fraud as a candidate? Most likely.
I got the original covid in March 2020, very mild for me. Although I did lose my sense of smell for 7 days, 100% gone. I never got tested to confirm, why bother. Besides, 5 days before I came down with it, a man was violently coughing and hacking in the grocery store right next to me, so I figure that's where I got it, I've never seen someone so sick in a store before (shame on him for shopping while that ill!). When I lost my smell I knew what it was. Then my husband got it from me, much worse. He tested and next thing I knew, the county nurse called and told me to stay home for 14 days. I said NO. That I'd already had it and gave it to my husband. She fought with me and then I politely ended the conversation. I could not believe the crap I got from most of my friends, saying, you need to get vaccinated anyway. It was mind blowing. I ignored them and lost a couple of very old friends. Too bad for them. I don't think any of those friends learned anything. I know this is anecdotal, but I bet it's true for many people who are like me. And the funny thing is, they are all liberals. None of my conservative friends were like this, they were combative like I was in many ways, including defying the mask directive.
Has anyone noticed that we now have a booster shot season where all the boosted are catching any opportunistic viruses, cooking them up in their compromised bodies and sharing them with each other.
I think and hope you are correct in this.
I was chased around the inside of a supermarket in Bridgehampton NY by a fat elderly woman who was screaming "You are stupid!" to me.
Good times. It felt like 1984 come alive.
Things were better here, since our laws prohibits and outright forbids the kind of stuff they did in Austria, Australia and UK f.e., so my uncharacteristically hopeful tone is coloured by that of course.
How many learned, I'm afraid will be decided by how the US polity swings. If things change due sanity (ind. of party affiliations) on various levels, the GATGA-crowd will swing in the same direction.
If it swings due Gavin Newsom-as-president...
And that is the $64,000 question… Did they Lear? I’m not certain… 🙄
@Rikard- my son goes to Walmart regularly. He would never wear a mask. He'd be stopped and told he had to have one on. He'd say "No, I don't. It's not a law." then proceed in. They never stopped him, either because they knew he was right or because they were too uneducated to figure out what he was saying.
Same where I was. We did not mask, we did not follow the arrows on the floor and we never changed our lives one iota. Fortunately, there are many like minded people where I live. I was never told to leave any store, ever, and I did my own in person shopping. What we DID do was bone up on the real science (not “The Science”) and take our supplements. No one in my immediate family got Covid, despite having very close contact with those who tested positive immediately after spending time with us. So, no, we didn’t play last time, and we won’t play thus time either!
I had been walking all the WM aisles that were open when someone pointed at the arrows on the floor. Obviously I had been walking 'the wrong way' all along. I just laughed and kept going the wrong way!
I would shake hands with other "rogue" shoppers! :-)
I noticed them myself, but never followed them, nor did i ever see anyone else following them.
I had a young stock person point out the arrows to me at one point and my response was "are you kidding?"
I was in a drugstore in NJ (Cresskill) big store that was part of a nationwide chain on another day. I was unmasked and a man did that intimidation thing (going toe to toe with me and leaning over me) telling me to wear my mask. I lifted my head to face him and said "no".
Suddenly, things shifted and he turned and tried to walk away quickly, with me right on his heels until he practically ran out the door.
I guess I breathed on him.
Truth be told, Ingrid, I deliberately walked the opposite way! I’ll be damned if someone is going to tell me how to walk!
Perfect response.
Same here, in northeast Texas.
I used it as a teaching opportunity for my daughter. We went to a store first and it had signs up that we had to wear masks. I told her we wouldn’t wear them and just see what happened.Nothing happened. Later we had to go to the hospital in a college town so they were pretty serious about the masks. We did the same thing, we didn’t wear the masks and an employee did say something but we just said we didn’t have to wear them and we moved on. Again, nothing happened.
When I had to go to the emergency room in '21, The security guy demanded I keep my mask up properly. Meanwhile they had an illiterate lady with suspected MRSA in her hand/arm wandering around the place trying to hand her phone off to people because she couldn't read the texts from her doctor.
😳
That could well be true. Protests about “vaccines”, lockdowns, masks etc not only didn’t get the press (politically incorrect) but were heavily criticized for “endangering” others. While deeply destructive & politically correct BLM riots were enthusiastically endorsed by the AMA & politicians. Apparently the BLM riots were immune to the ‘Rona.
Apparently, the virus was very selective in how it infected people. You know, you were safe unmasked if you were seated, eating, but God forbid if you stood up to leave or use the facilities! How people did not see how ludicrous this was is beyond me!
when you see these tube clips now, they are hilarious. a family all masked goes into a restaurant, sits down and takes the masks off. Have a glass with something in it, unmasked. Soon is glass is empty, mask again. Goes to bathroom puts mask on, eat, then goes out all masked again. People playing flute with a mask with a hole cut in it. Musicians all masked, but of course the singers cannot.
The sheer idiocy is mind boggling!
Seriously, when you look back on the idiocy to which we’re subjected, it’s absolutely unbelievable - probably even to the demons who dreamt it all up & implemented it.
It’s why I was so upset the 1st time I went to a big city & it seemed like at least 75%+ compliance w/ “policies” that made no sense, contradicted each other &/or were morally & ethically bankrupt.
You had to wear a blm t-shirt for immunity.
🤣
Believe it or not… I got kicked out of an Apple Store because I would not mask up. Immediately after that, I watched an African-American woman walk into the store with no mask, and they never said a single word to her… maybe I should have worn some darker make up and screamed racist or something… 🙄
Same. Utterly shocking. I just thought there's was no way. I honestly think the Patriot Act was conditioning. I should've thought about that before I thought Americans wouldn't put up with it.
Silly me.
Most were just terrified, BUT where most of my anger came from is those who knew better didn't have the courage to speak out because they didn't want to upset anyone or be viewed as a "disruptor.
I guess decorum is important when falling into an abyss, apparently.
I'm thinking this new hantavirus maybe the next "midterm" psyop.
For one reason:
Moderna has been collaborating with the Korea University Vaccine Innovation Center (VIC-K) since 2024 to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for hantavirus.
If doctors, pharmacists & real experts in related fields had just stood up & said none of this makes any sense & is absolutely not scientifically or ethically based, none of this could have happened. Alas, they were & are more captured than the average person.
Yeah. If nothing else the scamdemic revealed how evil the industrial medical complex is.
Yes, exactly. Like I posted above, the most "educated" have proven themselves the most compliant.
"Education" selects for compliance with arbitrary rules and dogma. That IS its function.
Learning is something else entirely.
I’m thinking a bunch of people did.
I gave it a try - but no one listened. That is where I kept away from all, and let them sudder in their own broth. In the meanwhile I just lived a quiet life in my cabin in the woods, with the dog and the cats, and the birds singing. Thankfully my very small neighborhood did not seem infected by the fear mongering.
Similar. I realized in 2020 that rural and small town folks were a lot more sane than people in the cities.
I live south of Tucson in a more rural/suburban area and visited friends and relatives in Calif. in the fall of 2020 and it sure was different there. Got yelled at in a sporting goods store for not having my mask pulled up fully...I told him "I am from Arizona, we don't do that there." I probably would have gotten escorted out had I not pulled up my "fake mask" that I made that didn't do diddly squat...wonder if that kid ever thinks about how "moral" he was back then?
Same
This is what is so great about your revelation:
These people are more wicked and evil than intelligent. Utilizing the VERY SAME PATTERNS and expecting the general public to not recognize them is to shoot themselves in the foot.
It's a new day and resistance is not futile.
You'll know they're taking Hantavirus mainstream when they have Tom Hanks make a post saying he has it.
I lost all respect for him when he spouted out the BS in a totally Biden way.
This form of propaganda will appear repeatedly because it works....and it makes the rubes angry if one has the principled response to stand against the propaganda. Remember fear porn was used to involve the U.S. in every war of the 20th century, as well as the climate change scam, the AIDS debacle (in which Fauci was the major player) and on and on. The other thing that this strategy does is to divide and conquer various groups instead of allowing individuals to ascertain who the real bad actors are.
Totally agree on the Patriot Act. Note how all politicians fight to keep it in force.
The absolutely bizarre thing (at least it seems bizarre to me although I’m no jab expert) is hantavirus appears in Pfizer’s post-authorization safety analysis for BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech’s internal development code for the COVID shot) lists “Hantavirus pulmonary infection” as one of the company’s adverse events of special interest.😳🤔
What does hantavirus have to do with the Covid-19 shots? I’m sure it’s something innocuous.
I'm not sure, but basically you have to sniff dry rat poop to get hantavirus.
I don't plan on doing that.
Seems more like a "pandemic" of filth
no effin' way!
Pretty straightforward, Cheryl imo
this was my response to those developing the shot for Hantavirus...guess I put it in the wrong spot....and totally agree with what you said above. I put my primary care doc right up there as he was probably operating from getting $ for pushing shots. I kept saying no...to everything and still do. He doesn't even ask me about any kind of shots/meds anymore.... :- ). Sorry for the confusion!
@Warmek- not only did they put up with it but many embraced it. Those are the ones who want others to think for them. I can't live that way. I've been accused online of being a know-it-all. No, I don't know it all but I AM a critical thinker.
Every single lawmaker is complicit except DeSantis.
And we can never forget the vast majority of Republicans were for it too.
Hell, even the Libertarian Party went along.
not "every single" -- our WI Senator Ron Johnson has been one of the very few but vocal and tireless "lawmakers" who has pushed and investigated and exposed much of the rot from the very beginning. and the exposure he has given the vaccine injured is without compare
Oh yeah. You're right.
He's a freaking hero.
Like clockwork, Kemp, our governor of Georgia, kept renewing the emergency executive orders.
Kemp also is refusing to redistrict…
What solidified it for me is his supposed refusal to state-mandate masks, but then do a tour of Georgia on proper mask hygiene.
Kemp is everything wrong with the Republican party.
What a wuss
R*I*N*O*
Yeah, that was the year I realized they weren't worth voting for. They and the Greens. Both of them and Sanders wasted the 2020 campaign recycling all their old arguments pretending it was the 1980s, and proving their lack of leadership by ignoring the elephant in the room.
DeSantis went along with it, too, at first. Check me on it, but I believe Noem was the first governor to open up, though SD is small enough it didn't make the news anywhere. There were several like the worthless Holcomb who, while they did not implement mandates, put the onus on counties and cities to implement their own mandates.
My understanding was that Noem didn't even shut the state down, she just left it up to her constituents. DeSantis did a second round of shutdowns in July-ish if I'm remembering right before capitalizing on the publicity of standing up to the Covid BS. Eventually, he left it up to the counties and cities, which was funny since the county right across the state line in AL dropped their mask requirements long before my county in FL did.
I'd have to go back and look, but I think she ordered the meat packing plants closed for a while. But other than that, yeah, I think she was pretty good. The Resses still closed, and that was their call, sort of, but she should have required them to not block state and federal roads. A couple of cities went nuts, too, as did some of the larger businesses.
Itd didn't matter. Shutdown or not. In Florida you could ignore mandates and it was respected.
It was the opposite type of pressure vs other states.
The people who were against it could live their lives and the freaks had to just live with it.
True. But, he had the courage to come out and stand up against the entire machine after just a few months. He also said he was wrong, which is immensely respected.
Im not taking anything away from Noem, but it's one thing to buck the machine when you have an entire state thats essentially rural, republican and only 900k population vs. Florida being mostly urban, deep purple (at the time) and 24 million population.
With the exception of Dave Smith, Tom Woods, Scott Horton and I’m sure a few others I don’t know, the libertarian party was quick to learn the goose step; they can all go fuck all.
There is a misperception that because we disagree we are somehow experts. I never claimed to be an expert. When people's cars break down and they say "my car broke down," no one shoots back "you aren't a car mechanic, how do you know?"
"...because my car no longer goes?"
I said the same thing to a friend from college who lived in China in 2020, warning of the coming fear.
I assured him there were adults in the room and that we would handle it the way we had with Bird Flu in 2002. But the adults had left the building.
Don't beat yourself up. I thought pretty much the same way.
A lot of people assume that a lot of the structure that created modern prosperity is still there, driving progress and protecting us from threats.
We're like Wile E Coyote after he runs off the cliff but before he looks down.
I was mortified by my fellow Americans. I wondered where the country that won WW1 & WW2 went?
It depended on where you were geographically. Flyoverlandia was mostly sane. I drove cross country maybe six months into the lockdowns and small town America didn’t wear masks or anything to any appreciable degree. But get into the hear of a big city and they were everywhere. I also went to the March for Life in DC the same year and DC proper was worlds different to Alexandra where my groups hotel was.
I dunno. That was not my experience. I drove a tractor trailer for most of 2020 and 2021. I hit 47 of 48 states in CONUS. Most places made me mask up. Now, I'll grant, these were typically corporations, either at the "truck stop" side, or the "shipper and receiver" side. So maybe they were just mitigating legal risk. But for damned near two years, I didn't talk to anyone in person who wasn't a cashier, a shipper, a receiver, or someone sitting in the truck parked next to me.
Yes, that makes sense, I went to a retreat where at the retreat proper they made people mask up, but the satellite city of Chicago it was held in didn’t appear to know a lockdown was going on when I went to get some Chinese food off site.
I was ultimately right about almost everything regarding covid, but I made two big mistakes in my calls
First, I assumed that it would take the army shooting civilians to get people to comply with lockdowns
And second, that the disease would rip through the population and be over within a few months, tops.
LOL
I am guilty of that too.
I followed a bunch of people from the Anti-Guardian over to another site and then onto substack. There were several Europeans in the bunch and I kept assuring them that Americans would not put up with the Covid circus and Americans would resist the flood of illegal immigration, etc.
Hoo Boy. I'm still eating that damn crow for leftovers.
Because America is not what it seems. A illusion, a lie.
Thanks to the Transnational captured MSM.
@Nick- an* illusion. And there are more that would stand up in times of agression than you'd think.
Yeah. That only happened in the US. Right.
Tolentino's wealthy family has been convicted for fraud and human trafficking, and Piker - a wealthy nepo-bolshi who wears $2000 Cartier jewelry while posing reading Lenin's works - is also from a wealthy family whose grandparents were cousins. So....why the *fuck* does anyone listen to or read these two sewer rats?
it's always like that. marx himself was like that.
agreee. It has always been like this.
wearing their boat shoes, standing on their yacht, yelling into their phones.
It's interesting that the world's leading Leftists are in the main products of wealthy, highly educated families. People so evidently hateful of family and economic prosperity, yet who cling to their own with a tenacity of white on rice...
marxism is the modal outcome of the super privileged who hate their dad.
all it takes is the wealth to hold outlandishly expensive luxury beliefs and a simmer resentment against the fact that your useless life depends upon the largesse of your parents.
you want the station you were born into, but lack the talent and application to learn it so you go for "next best thing" which is "demanding to be given power and privilege for your ideas instead of your accomplishments."
it's the opiate of the shiftlessly entitled.
marxism is just the rich children of VC's who cribbed a bad business plan demanding to be rewarded as though they had built a thriving business.
All* of the most committed communists were rich kids - Mao, Pol Pot, Che Guevara.
* - Stalin was the only exception I could think of . . .
Shaming them never seems to produce favorable results. But killing them has. Along with a lot of entrained "inadvertent consequences".
The world as we might wish it versus the world as it has always been.
It's the difference between growing up experiencing lack & want, of and for basic stuff, and growing up thinking you're poor because your parents didn't take you to Val d'Isére /and/ Chamonix during Winter holidays.
The former may grow up learning Marxist economic theory but will defer to reality first anyway; the latter will grow up thinking if you point at it and want it loudly enough, it will manifest for you.
In other words, they never grow out of the magical thinking of childhood!
In the old days it was "off to the colonies with you, son". The scions of wealthy families really had no excuse for lack of achievement. They may have complained, but the family money usually provided too much comfort to leave behind.
I think it goes back to Schumpeter - glad to be corrected - that said that capitalism's utility and efficiency is such that it creates a surplus of labour and capital and an entire class who benefits from it, while not producing anything of value. And so you see grifting turds like Tolentino and Piker - products of this surplus wealth - performatively shit on capitalism and free markets while being the beneficiaries of them.
This piece explains it well:
https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/society/why-intellectuals-become-leftists/
“And so you see grifting turds like Tolentino and Piker - products of this surplus wealth - “
The Professional Managerial class that thinks they know what’s best. Not some common Joe off the street, spouting nonsense. They claim moral authority.
They discuss “microlooting” and social murder without conscience.
Pretty sure that wasn't Schumpeter, he of the "creative destruction" school of economic advancement. Maybe David Graeber, Thorstein Veblen or Herbert Marcuse - staunch critics of capitalism...
What an excellent discussion of the elite class. Never trust those that don’t have to answer for their shortcomings.
Because there is a vast army of low IQ retards that think these scum are smart.
Therein lies the problem. Those with great reach, effect the most absurd results.
He (the Piker) also gives his dog electrical shocks, don't forget.
I sometimes wish he'd visit Sweden. He could get written up for animal abuse, and would if so possibly be sentenced to prison.
And in our prisons (which are rather comfy as prisons go) being a loudmouthed braggart is about the biggest no-no there is, coming in at first place after molesters and people abusing the elderly.
Same reason Piker wears Cartier jewelry!
Sometimes, not always, people like Piker exhibit how to become such a dick head.
As has been covered here before, it's not a long reach to conclude, if you respond to words with violence, and keep on with your insistence that the rest of the world accommodate your delusions, the rest of the world will eventually skip the words and initiate with violence next time your actions collide their peaceful lives. The deluded feel the same way of course, but they are so massively outnumbered and out resourced by those who just want to get to the grocery store and watch a football game that they'll be immediately swamped should the otherwise disinterested masses actually be roused.
I thought closing schools, making grandpa die alone, inflating currency, and ruining health care to enrich themselves might do it... alas.
As we get ready to celebrate 250 years of freedom, we need to ask ourselves if we are truly free.
If you made an average of 40k a year (and that’s well below the average annual American salary of approximately 61K) and invested the annual Social Security taxes forcefully taken out of our paycheck at $2,480.00 a year, after 40 years, you would have approximately $1,209,111.00 in principal, with dividends of approximately 50K a year.
How can we claim to be free when we can’t even invest our hard-earned dollars as we choose? The Amish can fill out form 4029 and not pay social security and medicare since they are from “a recognized religious group that has existed continuously since December 31, 1950.”
How is that not discrimination against those of us not in this religious group? Why can’t we file a class action lawsuit as an act of civil disobedience? https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/form-4029-the-application-for-exemption
@Liz- my sister worked for a VA hospital in Florida. BEcause she was a federal employee, SS was NOT taken out of her check. She had to invest on her own.
She was likely on the old federal system and they had GREAT benefits! It has changed. But if she worked 36 quarters outside of the fed gov't, she is eligible for SS benefits.....at her highest pay from the Fed Gov't. Ask me how I know this.
@MLisa- she's been retired for quite awhile now so I'm sure you're right.
How do you know this ?
Yes, I've talked to a few federal workers about this.
It's quite ironic and I'm no fan of irony. They have relatively good salaries, good pensions and great medical benefits and they don't have to pay into SS like the rest of us.
@Liz- yes, but not everyone is saver savvy.
Very true, but there's got to be a better way...
Go for it
'freedom'
The Atlantic seems to prey on the weak-minded. Period.
Like the rest of the Transnational captured MSM
Just off the top of my head, my ungovernability happens mostly in my car, I think. I speed. I make U-turns where I shouldn't (though NEVER on a highway). I park where I shouldn't, though I stay with the car and more than once have had to explain to the authorities the differences between stopping, standing, and parking. I'll run a red if I'm sitting there for too long and CLEARLY no one is within a country mile of the intersection.
Then again, I refused the jab from the get-go, I refused to wear a mask unless forced to (and then took it off when that authority figure disappeared) and got into more than one animated exchange with a Karen (Virginia Beach, I'm thinking of you; Bayamon Costco, you too).
Sounds pretty lame in writing! But "don't tell me what to do" is my overall governing principle, and in no small part probably why I've been self-employed since 1992.
I was wondering what my problem of unemployability was. I too have worked for myself . I proudly follow those “ rules for living” you wrote about.
"where people yell at you for jaywalking across an empty street is indeed a stupid and a flabby place."
That's Switzerland! I've had several late Saturday nights over the years on visits to both both Zurich and Geneva when, walking (kind of) back to my Hotel at 1-2AM on completely deserted streets, the locals STILL wait for the lights to change to cross. And look at you as though you are a criminal for not "complying". Still, it's always good for a laugh.
@Philipat- I grew up in a small town in New York. Husband grew up in the suburbs of a small city (we live in the house his parents built). Neither of us were subjected to the crossing signals as kids. We're elderly adults and I STILL have no clue how to figure them out. He kind of does. So we cross when there are no cars coming, just like old times!
I treat those signals as recommendations not rules. No incidents thus far.
@New- and we're still alive to talk about it!
Canada too, at least in downtown Calgary.
The most rabid fanatics are often just paid shills. Sometimes they are bots. Or they are lemmings following paid shills and bots. Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. Ideology is a shallow substitute but suffices. Depth and virtue are more worthy goals and more rare.
Great post. Thank you
When hate enhancements became a thing, I knew we were on dangerous ground, but I had no clue how dangerous it would become. Motive was already taken into account for crimes, so why enhancements for those thoughts and creating a hierarchy? If someone kills a family member, is there really solace that it wasn't based on a hate category? I think killing someone for the joy of it seems pretty hateful. Fast forward to BLM, which taught us that physical violence for right speech is okay, and wrong speech with no violence is a big no-no. So now stealing from a grocery stuff is right action because it hits a business already on thin profit margins which then passes the losses it on to the general public. Why not go shoplift your new iphone? I think those profit margins are more in sync with the ideology. Decades ago an Israeli friend said she didn't feel safe in our grocery stores because there was no armed security. I told her I wouldn't feel safe it our grocery stores. Well here we are today with SWAT looking security that mill about but actually can't do anything because they are prohibited from doing so. They are just there as a faint reminder of what burly men used to do when crime happened. Thankfully TJs hasn't joined in. Somehow have a trust worthy atmosphere seems to work.
I can't help but wonder if the flattening of identitarian beliefs has seeped into our own personal worlds as we drive. Years ago, it was only the young drivers with fun cars that blew through neighborhood stop signs. Since the weekly protests in SoCal, that practice has shifted to a wider range of drivers. Now the old gray-haired lady blows through, as does the construction worker and gardener. The last two used to be the most polite drivers. I knew when they joined in we were screwed.
I was in a Grand Prairie, TX, grocery store in February 2021 when the windmill electricity was intermittent. Everybody was civilizationally behaved, and there were no armed guards.
Everyone sighed a audible breath of relief when the lights came back on. But until then, people used their phone's flashlight to get around.
A friend of mine just moved back home to Texas. She has a sound of relief in her voice where yes ma'm and no sir are not pejoratives.
Interesting observations
A insane asylum inside of a Kafka trap.....pretty much describes the strange times we're living in!
This political left movement does have a crack. Most of these characters clamoring about their moral superiority and promoting violence against dissenters won't actually engage in physical violence themselves. They talk a big game when they are surrounded by their like minded comrades, but individually, most wouldn't risk any kind of physical confrontation. This is partly why they champion collectivism. Because as individuals they are mentally and physically weak.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
~C.S. Lewis
Ah, yes. “ the tyranny of good intentions “
I saw in 2016 the "speech is violence - violence is speech" ridiculous notion, but the version I saw was "disagreement is hate." And there has been a lot of absurd upending of reality. Such as thinking that not wearing a mask is considered "fragile."
On X, I interacted with someone who I will call "Beetle" We got into it because of masking.
Daily, I will scroll through my algorithm and find a post about masking and all I will leave is some variation of "masks do not work." I do not denigrate the person making the post, I simply leave that as a constant reminder to counter what I speculate (I could be wrong), virtue signalling wearing a mask in a world where so few people adopt such a practice in 2026.
The irony is these same people who consider it a mark of virtue to mask still when so many do not, were most likely the first to pile onto those few who did not mask in grocery stores back in 2020.
He posted the "masks work" op ed (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/), which is really an indictment of the Cochrane Review, and then continuously bugged me for "more evidence" because he thought the op ed did a great job of refuting the Review, which it did not.
Long story short. Beetle then degenerated into ad hominem attacks and other logical fallacies, and then doxxed me, and threatened to call personal friends/family/businesses regarding my posts on X, which gave me no choice but to warn people that someone from X might be contacting them.
My account, which used to have my actual name, was changed as a result because I naively believed people would act in good faith.
These people who have rationalized their actions do indeed see disagreement as harassment and feel completely vindicated in harassing others. Beetle has since blocked me, yet continues to follow and interact with others who respond to me urging them to not engage.
We should kick his ass—maybe then he’d finally learn. Totally joking, but damn, it would be satisfying as hell.
He is anonymous.
I wasn't and he attempted to use that against me. He rationalized it by saying I was a "public figure," which had me in a laughing fit for a good five minutes.
May be the worst thing about the shutdown was making people die alone. Just that was —and still is—unforgivable.
If my loved one were dying and someone tried to make them die alone by preventing me from being with them when they died, two people would've died that day.
that was brave of you. but when it actually happened we were kept out of the hospital. And not the only ones.
No no, I'm only speculating on what I would do, or what I hope I would do, to anyone who might've tried to stop me from seeing a dying loved one. Whether from a baseball bat or a 9mm or anything in between, I hope I would've done right by my loved one.
Well, yes. But it started a long long time ago, didn't it? A really long time ago.
To mature is to discover within oneself the capacity to do the right thing, and refrain from doing the wrong thing, because you recognize what each of those things may be and not because the security guard has his eye on you throughout your shopping adventure.
That fine moment (in the book; the movies are just awful) when Galadriel says "I passed the test"--we all need to pass our own tests and teach our children to do so also. That's how you maintain as much of a healthy society as we're able to do at any period in time.
This is true for every choice for the entire course of your life. What's so astonishing these days of everyone being able to have an audience is how many people in their thirties and older remain toddlers to their cores and the people who might rebuke them have remained toddlers too.