I made some new shit for the online store here, and I wanted to talk about the inspiration for it.
From early childhood, I’ve smelled something fishy. I’ve had many head injuries and lost some of my memory as a result, so I’m not really sure when my “awakening” was; I do however remember being defiant in elementary school. When I was in Kindergarten my teacher allowed me to learn at my own pace and it ended up causing a lot of problems. I was completing second grade workbooks by the time I was ready to go to first grade and I (and my parents, evidently) thought that I would be able to continue at the pace I’d already set for myself; we were extremely wrong. Not only did they not allow me to advance, but even when presented with the completed and graded workbooks I’d already done they insisted that I do them again in their presence. So I stopped doing any work whatsoever. They threatened and cajoled, told my parents that I’d be held back, whatever they could think of except for letting me be. As a side note, I’m told that the conversation was pretty hilarious; the kid who was ahead of the rest of the class would be held back because he refused to redo work that had already been completed perfectly. I’m not sure exactly my parents did or said, but I remember growing up with the idea that I’d never be allowed to approach my potential until I was out of public school. I’m now fairly sure that that environment caused serious issues that I still have to this day, but I digress.
Skepticism has served me well, I think, and allowed me to peer deeper into the bullshit than some others are able. On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I predicted that we would have a massive surveillance state, expanded government departments (I didn’t see a whole new cabinet department; sue me), governmental waste and lawlessness, massive upticks in propaganda and “othering” opponents, and bombs falling on at least two countries that had nothing to do with the attack. Like Cassandra, no one believed me. Then, when revelations started coming out that exactly the things I’d warned against were happening, I sat back and heard exactly goddamned ZERO apologies. It was then I fully realized that too many people get their identity from their politics. And it’s only gotten worse.
At the start of the Covid panic, I was speaking to one of my very oldest and best friends, and he seemed to have shifted from skeptic to believer. When I was telling him that the response was going to be orders of magnitude worse than the problem itself, he said, “I dunno, man; I’ve been doing a lot of looking around and talking to people in those most affected countries and it seems legit” which pissed me right off as I thought he was better than trying an appeal to authority, not to mention what he was actually saying. Now that it appears that Covid supplanted normal death from bacterial infection, heart disease, pneumonia, and other causes of old people dying, and did not really add any excess deaths (at least in the US). When I looked up the stats and saw that roughly 8,000 people died every day in the US in 2019 (that’s nearly 3 million people every year, by the way) I knew that we were heading into Crazy Town, and that any other cause of death would be ignored by the Covid monomaniacs. Guess who was right yet again?
Lockdowns? Those of us with any interest in economics at all knew it would be a disaster and now the “experts” are warning against the damage that would be caused by additional lockdowns. Still they proceed. The problem is political in nature and I’ll get into what I think are the causes in a future blog, but suffice to say that once a politician has painted themselves into a corner they will dig in rather than walk through it. And their adherents are even worse because the politician lies in public but privately knows the truth, but true believers can’t be swayed because they buy the lie.
Masks? If evidence were presented that viruses pass unmolested through cloth but that bacteria sticks and breeds, resulting in more and more severe infections which will be exacerbated by the presence of covid, do you think any of these “Wear the damn mask” people will be swayed?
Immunity? I’ve been telling people for YEARS that they needed to stay away from processed foods, and get more sun and exercise. This, I told them, would improve their overall health, drop fat, make their skin look better, and keep them from getting sick. I was dismissed as some crackpot hippy. I was able to lose 50 pounds and haven’t been sick in years doing those very things, and I’m in my mid-40’s. But clearly I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’ve had houseguests comment that their blood sugar was much more controlled when they were staying with me, but they never took any lessons from my lifestyle home with them.
All I’m saying is that more people need to look outside what they think they know (my mom is a retired RN and I got the standard western medical treatment until I was in my 30’s and taking pills every day to help with my horrible gut problems) and try some new learnin’. You may confirm your biases, you may change your life; who knows until you try?
