The people still wearing masks are the same ones who say
“Happy Holidays.” Both are nasty little statements, cloaked in compassion but
rooted in control.
In late December, the whole world knows what holiday is
coming up, and almost everyone celebrates it in some fashion, regardless of
their beliefs. To pretend you’re celebrating Kwanzaa instead, and especially to
act as though mentioning Christmas is an offense, is to be a sanctimonious
jerk.
Similarly, masks are passive-aggression made cloth. They are
a means to signal one’s own virtue, whilst wordlessly judging others and accomplishing
less than nothing.
My cursory assessment is that mask-clingers are
disproportionately a particular sort of perpetually disturbed woman. That is
not to say “disturbed” as in mentally so – although there is that – but always in
a mood, disappointed and exasperated with others for not living up to her
standards.
Born to rule and wired to complain, you have known her all
your life. Playing in the schoolyard, she was the one to call a halt and
dictate what the rules ought to be. She has traded her tricycle for a Subaru
but she is the same joyless buzzkill, unable to consider simply leaving other people
alone.
The Karen Variant arose early in this pandemic (viz.,
Karenavirus) and no amount of sheltering in place can repel it (although shuttering
Starbucks and Nextdoor might be worth a try).
My neighborhood is a leafy, middle class enclave where such
women thrive, along with the sort of men they marry. It is a place where, while
walking one’s dog, previously unobjectionable people now pull their cars over so
they can give you their vaccination testimony. I do not exaggerate. One is
repulsed and alarmed by the starry-eyed zealotry of men (males, anyway) bursting
to confess that they have accepted Pfizer as their Lord and personal spike
protein.
The latest local trend is to put light-up hearts in the front
window, replacing the ubiquitous children’s drawings of rainbows, many of which
were accompanied by a presumably adorable scrawl of “It’s gonna be ok” or some
such.
Well, yes and no. Yes, the proximate cause of this madness –
a disease from which you, budding artist, had nothing to fear, either as a victim
or a carrier – was certainly ok, and we knew that early on. But no, inasmuch as
your unspeakable mother – who puts a mask over your face before sending you out
for a “playdate” in the midsummer heat – will not allow it to be ok.
The hearts and the rainbows and the cloying yard signs
thanking “front line workers” (presumably posted unironically, despite 16 months
of dancing Tik-Tok nurses) are meant to be a vigil until the end of the
disease. I rise to propose that if people stopped worshipping this thing,
perhaps it would go away.
But of course, they cannot. People need something to worship,
and they would rather die roaring than pray to God Himself (these are people
who “put it out to the Universe” when they want something). Besides, climate
change is so 2012 and Kwanzaa is months away.
I do not wish to add fuel to the insanity, and one hesitates
even to write about it, as to do so is to help keep it alive. But there are two
reasons I take crayon in hand to opine: First, as we enter the back half of 2021,
it is clear that those opposed will not let this go away (more on which below);
second, there is a sentiment I know to be true, but I wish were more commonly
expressed: You are not alone.
If you are anything like me (and if you have read this far, we
probably speak the same language), you look around at a world gone mad and
wonder where it will lead. If, again like me, you find yourself surrounded by rainbows
and fashionable masks, pulled down only to reveal the fanatical, Heaven’s Gate
grins of the recently jabbed, you feel unsteady in your soul.
Almost every form of media adds to the disquiet. Your
Facebook feed is a parade of horribles, where people you once respected, or at
least could stand, spout off like suburban witch doctors. The guy who ate paste
deep, deep into high school is there too, telling everyone within eyeshot to
inject themselves with an experimental serum or “unfriend me NOW!”
Be not afraid. This is what it appears to be: temporary
madness and mass psychosis.
It is not harmless, and “temporary” can mean rather a long
time in human terms (see the Soviet Union), but you are not the crazy one.
Moreover, not only are you not alone, but it is at least possible that you are
in the majority.
In this Age of Lies, it is nigh impossible to quantify anything
with confidence. Polls, election results (ahem), infection, death and
vaccination rates are all massaged and tinkered with, if not manufactured
outright, to achieve a desired result. It can be exhausting, always having to
assess the source and its motivation. The experienced consumer of news is aware
that it's almost all stuff and nonsense; the trick is divining the extent and
reason for the lies.
Nevertheless, there is much to be said for common
sense. It pierces the mists of deceit, no matter how thick.
My neighborhood of jagged rainbows and creepy grins is officially
ranked as "the most vaccinated in Canada." One may therefore conclude
that my immediate environs are about as bad as it gets, in terms of smug
collectivism. Nowhere to go but up, as it were.
We few local dissenters hear legends of a place called
"Florida" (is that how you pronounce it?), where life is normal and
people are free.
One need not go full DeSantis to see that there is a vast
range of sanity out there, despite the best efforts of authorities to hide it
from view.
Even in a neighborhood like mine, if you pick one of the
Covidians off from the herd (conversationally, that is), you can occasionally
draw some sanity out of them. Perhaps they are frustrated at masking Dakota for
recycling camp, or they harbor quiet concerns about her future fertility due to
the jab.
It won't last, of course. The next time you encounter your
interlocutor, she'll brag about how they just quadruple-vaxxed their newborn in
her crib without waking her from her nap, but at least you caught a glimpse of
a normal person.
We are not born with masks on our faces, nor is there a
logically cogent reason to inject everyone, and the common man knows this, even
if he must quash the thought for purposes of comity.
Such quashing is mandated from on high, but relies on
ground-level collaboration. While every position of power is held by proponents
of the approved worldview – the "wear your mask, take your jab, eat your
bugs" crowd, if you will – they are a small minority.
Not only are they relatively few, but they are an odd sort,
rather different from you and me and others obliged to live in the real world.
They are the ones who have enjoyed job security even as they closed countless
businesses, and who flout the rules they create for you and me (plus ca
schoolyard change).
On a human level, they are peculiar people. At the risk of
seeming glib, I recall that opening pitch (if one can call it that) hurled by
Anthony Fauci last summer at a Washington Nationals game. If you've seen it,
you remember.
It is not my intention to make fun of him – although there is
that – but I remain gobsmacked that an adult male, who grew up in America, is
incapable of throwing a ball.
One might excuse it by saying Fauci is elderly, or that he
has been too busy "saving lives" to perfect his throwing arm (which
raises the awkward question of how long it has been since Fauci treated a
patient), but this was more than that.
No one expected Fauci to bring the split-finger heat, but
this was not even a proper throw, by any previous definition. It flailed off to
one side, traveling nowhere near home plate, and one could easily suppose it
was the first time he had ever attempted such a thing.
How can a grown man who does not know how to throw a ball
relate to me, much less run my life?
It seems a small thing, and perhaps it is, but it speaks
loudly to me.
Again, though - Fauci and people who think as he does control
every power center at the moment. From media to education to government and
corporate culture, the world is currently one big, uptalking HR department.
With few exceptions, everything you see on your computer,
phone, and television (even the blasted commercials) reinforces their
worldview. It can therefore be easy to conclude that you are the odd one out
and that their vision is inevitable. This is why I take pains to say: You are
not alone.
Reality and reason are not on their side. Their numbers do
not add up, their stories don't fit together, and you are not crazy for
noticing that. This is important to bear in mind, since things are going to get
bumpy this fall.
Perhaps you have already encountered this, at work or school.
Maybe you have kids heading to college who are being mandated to receive an
experimental injection which, by the regime's own logic, they do not
need.
They have been telegraphing like a jonesing Samuel Morse
that, while there's not much they can do to clamp us down during summer, as the
weather cools and regular cold and flu season returns, they'll be strapping on their
winter jackboots.
But like Satan himself, they know their time is short (I
doubt either side of that simile has much cause to object).
They are doing the hard press on college kids because they know
this is a vulnerable spot, and a time-sensitive one besides. But a year
from now, when they are still trying to gin up panic over the Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot variant, and people still have to refer to the tragic death of their
sister's neighbor's ex-husband's dogsitter's grandmother who had diabetes and
was born during the Taft administration to come up with someone who died of it,
how much traction will they get?
Consider for a moment this "vaccine passport"
obscenity. In my neck of the woods, they give the jabbed a flimsy little piece
of paper as proof of compliance. Even if one does not lose it - and one expects
my neighbors frame and pray to theirs like the Shroud of Turin - everyone would
have to go back and register themselves in some global database, which we can
expect will run about as smoothly as the Obamacare website.
All of which is to say, these people cannot make this work,
they probably know it, so the best they can do is scare you that Madison will
miss a semester of Gender Studies if you don't hop to.
Much is supposed about why they are doing all this. Is it for
money? Mass sterilization? Control?
The answer is unknowable because there is more than one (they
are Legion, if you will).
People making and selling jabs certainly have a pecuniary
motive. Those who want everyone injected, whether they need it or not – whether
it harms them or not, in fact – are indulging in the all-too-human impulse for
power over others. The chief aim of the state is to make its citizens legible,
which explains the desire for a centralized health and vaccination database.
Finally, there is much to be said for the warm comfort of conformity, coupled
with the opportunity to hurt and sneer at those who disobey.
What you will notice about the above list is that none of the
motivations are to your benefit. I do not include a genuine concern for the
health of one's fellow man on the list because, at this point, with so many
absurd narratives and documented harms of this medical tyranny, I no longer
believe it to be possible.
But like Prohibition, the tulip craze, or tying an onion to
your belt, this madness cannot last.
We are not alone, and our task is to outlast them. They will
not quit until they have to, and we never will.
Be prepared, be hopeful, and stay strong. The next few months
will be a challenge. They will almost certainly try to cancel Christmas (again)
but, if the police come knocking, just tell them you're celebrating
Kwanzaa.
Theo Caldwell just wanted to be left alone. Contact him at theo@theocaldwell.com
