Isn't it so irritating? The hospital where my husband works, several weeks ago informed everyone that masks would once again be required - starting the following week. Because the virus, or whatever, wasn't due to arrive until then?? Give me a break. He's a researcher and evidently they don't have to mask on the floors where the labs are, just the first three floors where the patients are. Because science. Air absolutely does not just flow everywhere, shut up.
Also, something really icky is that wearing a mask mask might very well increase your own viral load, if you are sick and breathing more concentrated levels of your own lurgy! I'm just so sick of it all.
I hope your friend is doing better. Prayers for his recovery. ❤️
It is. But, again, I could deal with smart people following stupid rules if they just admitted they were stupid rules, and that they were just trying to make it through the day without getting hassled or fired.
And thank you kindly for your prayers. He'll need all the help he can get.
But the stupid rules are there just to wear down resistance, and acknowledging them as such just to "survive" accelerates the demoralization which is why open defiance is best. I know what you mean, I'm not downplaying the average person's desire to just get through the day, but allowing that deepens the moral rot. We have waaay too many friends and acquaintances who are going along, some of whom are still true believers, so I get you wanting Matt to at least acknowledge the inanity of the theater as he complies. But by complying he destroys his soul. Also, I'm not convinced that this compliance is a "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" thing, submit to authority because God has set these people over you thing, which undoubtedly sets me at odds with some among the body of Christ. He will assuredly set me right on this one day, if I am in the wrong. I only mention these things in case anyone who has read my previous comments says, "but wait, aren't Christians supposed to...." All I can say is that I just can't believe that God approves of interventions against whole populations that are proven to cause actual harm to vast numbers of those people. And now you know I'm not a determinist, lol.
I generally agree with this. I guess I'm just trying to be humble in my expectations. I do believe that cathartic revelation is possible, and that people can be transformed in any instant. But I also think that most people don't experience it that way. If they get there at all, its usually much slower and gradual, a process of baby steps.
And I'd actually call the a basic admission that "the rules are stupid and useless" is a bit more than a baby step. It has the potential to open up a new world of insights and clarity. You might, for instance, start to notice that others also think the rules are stupid, and that might snowball into conversations, and then to small acts of rebellion that get bigger and brasher over time.
That said, I agree that retailing lies and nonsense is always spiritually damaging. Even moreso if we do that knowingly, because in order to maintain a positive self-image/worth, we need to convince ourselves that everyone else is doing that too. We see ourselves as motivated liars in a sea of motivated liars, which temporarily soothes our egos, but also makes us feel more isolated, distant, suspicious, lonesome and afraid.
And when this twisted view of "relative truths" becomes the norm?
Sorry to see Pritzker and newsom’s names not on this map. Two men who had the audacity to lie to their own constituents. One had a wife who travelled to Fl during lockdown, the other was out for eat a meal with friends while he told everyone else to lockdown. What a disgrace. And yet their constituents continue to think their governors are saints. As we witness the fall of the western empire, I sure hope all those people who never held their governors accountable, sure wish they had.
"And yet their constituents continue to think their governors are saints."
Maybe that's changing. It's hard to see their constituents clearly through all the propaganda shields. For instance, near the end of the Soviet Union, the regime had few actual admirers or true believers left. Many went through the motions, but others were just invisible because Pravda was desperate to hide not just their numbers, but the fact of their existence. I hope it's something like that.
If masks are so fucking effective, why weren’t they recommended every year during flu season from 1918 through 2020? It was only in 2020 our august public health “experts” realized masks work against influenza? Or did they know they worked for over 100 years and let tens of thousands of people die?
William Burroughs said that the writer always reveals themselves in their writing - The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent.
A bought and paid-for writer will always write like a bought and paid-for writer, although the employer will probably demand at least a minimum of skills.
The Good Writer will make the subject so dance that we believe in its existence.
In the Good vs Evil trench war, it seems to me that your writing passes the "I am not a robot" test.
To my mind, passing the "I am not a robot" test is a profound compliment, whether we conceive of a robot as one of our modern talking toys or in its original meaning of "slave." We must continually pass both tests to win this war (and, in a sense, they are the same test).
This past year, I've been helping an isolated older woman deal with terminal cancer. (Not turbo-cancer, though. We're both raging anti-vaxxers.) It's been difficult; she's socially isolated because of a penchant for self-sabotage and a mountain of emotional baggage she never saw fit to deal with.
Anyway, she's recently moved over to a nursing home, and when I visit her I get to do the Mask Dance too. Generally I pull the mask down under my nose, so I can breathe and to signal that I know it's a farce. None of the nurses give me grief over it. They may not like it, I can't tell, but it's not worth the hassle to any of us to fight about it.
What's frustrating in particular to me is the human face contains so many subtle clues about what's going on in a person's mind and soul. While the eyes might be the clearest windows, there is so much more going on that's hidden and lost. Those nurses, for example, could be grimacing or smirking behind their masks, either at the rulebreakers or the rules themselves.
Maybe the mask is just designed so we don't have to face each other about the medical cartel turning into a depopulation regime? I mean, it's easier to memory hole mass murder that way, right?
As to the border, every day it seems less likely anything but an open border policy is going to come out of DC and Wall Street. I'm even starting to wonder if they will let Trump win to reignite white boy passion for dying by drone in some foreign land, or even a Woke draft to hasten the, um, Great Replacement.
I think that's part of it, yes. There is also an aspect of ritualistic humiliation to wearing the mask (and which probably includes a forced-feminization/slavery component, via the psychic terrain of the hijab in the West).
In either case, enforced depersonalization appear to be the result. The victims can camouflage suspicions, uneasiness or guilty feelings, which the human face tends to broadcast despite our best attempts to conceal them.
Well that's what they're planning in the UK right now. Somehow the Royal Navy cannot stop the dozens of small dinghies full of illegal immigrants crossing 20 miles of the English Channel to swell the numbers of our bursting at the seams small country - although they managed to stop the supreme fighting machine that was the German army, making the crossing 80 years ago. Funny that!
At the same time, we are being threatened with conscription to fight Russia! Hello? Are we are at war with Russia? News to me! Quite frankly, the Russians can come right on over and take over as far as I'm concerned - Putin could not possibly be any worse than the woke, socialist, corrupt totalitarians running the country into the ground right now.
“The compliance cult was never founded on science at all. It was rooted in various forms of magical thinking and mental illness, buttressed by authorities who weren’t accustomed to anyone questioning their orders.”
I left medicine because of the vaccine. I haven't gone back because of the masks. Turns out too much cognitive dissonance is bad for my health. Kudos to those powering through the farce. Fie on those who don't realize how farcical they've become.
I agree it requires at least some bit of strength to carry on with the mask farce (provided we *know* it's a farce to begin with). But I think it's also like a sip from the Pierian Spring: a small draught could be worse than no draught at all. If you play along without admitting its stupid, your burn whatever's left of your credibility and trustworthiness.
As others have, I offer my best wishes to your friend.
I have experienced the "mind-melding" moment you describe in this essay so many times. Each time this happens, I almost always immediately feel as though I am in the presence of a new friend, not just an acquaintance. At the very least, it's always a relief.
It's weird, right? So much of our experiences of other people is nonverbal, maybe even ethereal. When our mind becomes clear enough of garbage, I think it becomes possible to "sense" the friend/enemy position with little in the way of explicit data to go on.
(And yes, I mean something like ESP. WoooOOOOoooo...)
Thank you for your kind and empowering words. I agree whole heartedly. We will win this and for exactly the reasons you point out. The pile up is unbearable. Who will shoulder the burden of the rediculous lies when it only takes a few words to bust it wide open? As Liz Dickson and Heather Heying pointed out last week, the emergency act ruling in Canada was a revelation. Not even an elite appointed judge will run cover for their lies. The industrial-hate-complex is the desperate end stage occupation of our minds. But the truth is if it were not for the force mutliplier of every crazy person I know who ran directly into fire I am not sure where this would be today. But it sure feels good to laugh at the absurdity of it. I couldnt laugh for two years. It's like a purgation. Back then I accepted that I may never reap the fruits of dissidents, but I knew my children would. And the 'lizards' who pray on our misfortune, will never want anything as much as I want my children to be free. That's why we can laugh today at their 'strategically retarded antivirus amulet'. Because we can see our dawn breaking. They can keep their emergency acts of magical thinking and fear and we will keep our reason and our love and we will bring in the new day.
It’s the FEAR factor that bows to a FALSE protocol. Thanks for the post.This is the first I’ve heard of you. Looking forward to more. Don’t stay too long at the fair lol.
Agreed, Judith. Weirdly, I think the nighttime routine points to the idea that a lot of their fear is rooted in fear that the public (i.e crazy masker family members of patients) will rat them out. Total Stazi East Germany vibe.
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
It is a long story, but I ended up out of the hospital from Covid and with a new doctor in Nov, 2021. Every time I see him, he was wearing the silly mask, except it didn’t cover his nose so he could breathe. Maybe he pulled it up when it mattered (around other medical staff) but with a patient, down it was. It makes me laugh. He is a D.O. and his recommendation for everything is lots of walking.
Solid zingers in there man. Killin' me.
Thanks, brudder. Hoping to get back to full action, very soon.
Isn't it so irritating? The hospital where my husband works, several weeks ago informed everyone that masks would once again be required - starting the following week. Because the virus, or whatever, wasn't due to arrive until then?? Give me a break. He's a researcher and evidently they don't have to mask on the floors where the labs are, just the first three floors where the patients are. Because science. Air absolutely does not just flow everywhere, shut up.
Also, something really icky is that wearing a mask mask might very well increase your own viral load, if you are sick and breathing more concentrated levels of your own lurgy! I'm just so sick of it all.
I hope your friend is doing better. Prayers for his recovery. ❤️
It is. But, again, I could deal with smart people following stupid rules if they just admitted they were stupid rules, and that they were just trying to make it through the day without getting hassled or fired.
And thank you kindly for your prayers. He'll need all the help he can get.
But the stupid rules are there just to wear down resistance, and acknowledging them as such just to "survive" accelerates the demoralization which is why open defiance is best. I know what you mean, I'm not downplaying the average person's desire to just get through the day, but allowing that deepens the moral rot. We have waaay too many friends and acquaintances who are going along, some of whom are still true believers, so I get you wanting Matt to at least acknowledge the inanity of the theater as he complies. But by complying he destroys his soul. Also, I'm not convinced that this compliance is a "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" thing, submit to authority because God has set these people over you thing, which undoubtedly sets me at odds with some among the body of Christ. He will assuredly set me right on this one day, if I am in the wrong. I only mention these things in case anyone who has read my previous comments says, "but wait, aren't Christians supposed to...." All I can say is that I just can't believe that God approves of interventions against whole populations that are proven to cause actual harm to vast numbers of those people. And now you know I'm not a determinist, lol.
I generally agree with this. I guess I'm just trying to be humble in my expectations. I do believe that cathartic revelation is possible, and that people can be transformed in any instant. But I also think that most people don't experience it that way. If they get there at all, its usually much slower and gradual, a process of baby steps.
And I'd actually call the a basic admission that "the rules are stupid and useless" is a bit more than a baby step. It has the potential to open up a new world of insights and clarity. You might, for instance, start to notice that others also think the rules are stupid, and that might snowball into conversations, and then to small acts of rebellion that get bigger and brasher over time.
That said, I agree that retailing lies and nonsense is always spiritually damaging. Even moreso if we do that knowingly, because in order to maintain a positive self-image/worth, we need to convince ourselves that everyone else is doing that too. We see ourselves as motivated liars in a sea of motivated liars, which temporarily soothes our egos, but also makes us feel more isolated, distant, suspicious, lonesome and afraid.
And when this twisted view of "relative truths" becomes the norm?
Well... we've seen what happens.
Sorry to see Pritzker and newsom’s names not on this map. Two men who had the audacity to lie to their own constituents. One had a wife who travelled to Fl during lockdown, the other was out for eat a meal with friends while he told everyone else to lockdown. What a disgrace. And yet their constituents continue to think their governors are saints. As we witness the fall of the western empire, I sure hope all those people who never held their governors accountable, sure wish they had.
"And yet their constituents continue to think their governors are saints."
Maybe that's changing. It's hard to see their constituents clearly through all the propaganda shields. For instance, near the end of the Soviet Union, the regime had few actual admirers or true believers left. Many went through the motions, but others were just invisible because Pravda was desperate to hide not just their numbers, but the fact of their existence. I hope it's something like that.
If masks are so fucking effective, why weren’t they recommended every year during flu season from 1918 through 2020? It was only in 2020 our august public health “experts” realized masks work against influenza? Or did they know they worked for over 100 years and let tens of thousands of people die?
Excellent point. Unfortunately, I suspect their response will either be more gobbledygook or *crickets*.
William Burroughs said that the writer always reveals themselves in their writing - The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent.
A bought and paid-for writer will always write like a bought and paid-for writer, although the employer will probably demand at least a minimum of skills.
The Good Writer will make the subject so dance that we believe in its existence.
In the Good vs Evil trench war, it seems to me that your writing passes the "I am not a robot" test.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
To my mind, passing the "I am not a robot" test is a profound compliment, whether we conceive of a robot as one of our modern talking toys or in its original meaning of "slave." We must continually pass both tests to win this war (and, in a sense, they are the same test).
This past year, I've been helping an isolated older woman deal with terminal cancer. (Not turbo-cancer, though. We're both raging anti-vaxxers.) It's been difficult; she's socially isolated because of a penchant for self-sabotage and a mountain of emotional baggage she never saw fit to deal with.
Anyway, she's recently moved over to a nursing home, and when I visit her I get to do the Mask Dance too. Generally I pull the mask down under my nose, so I can breathe and to signal that I know it's a farce. None of the nurses give me grief over it. They may not like it, I can't tell, but it's not worth the hassle to any of us to fight about it.
What's frustrating in particular to me is the human face contains so many subtle clues about what's going on in a person's mind and soul. While the eyes might be the clearest windows, there is so much more going on that's hidden and lost. Those nurses, for example, could be grimacing or smirking behind their masks, either at the rulebreakers or the rules themselves.
Maybe the mask is just designed so we don't have to face each other about the medical cartel turning into a depopulation regime? I mean, it's easier to memory hole mass murder that way, right?
As to the border, every day it seems less likely anything but an open border policy is going to come out of DC and Wall Street. I'm even starting to wonder if they will let Trump win to reignite white boy passion for dying by drone in some foreign land, or even a Woke draft to hasten the, um, Great Replacement.
I think that's part of it, yes. There is also an aspect of ritualistic humiliation to wearing the mask (and which probably includes a forced-feminization/slavery component, via the psychic terrain of the hijab in the West).
In either case, enforced depersonalization appear to be the result. The victims can camouflage suspicions, uneasiness or guilty feelings, which the human face tends to broadcast despite our best attempts to conceal them.
That and children cannot truly connect emotionally to others, so they grow up malajusted and are more easily indoctrinated.
100%
Well that's what they're planning in the UK right now. Somehow the Royal Navy cannot stop the dozens of small dinghies full of illegal immigrants crossing 20 miles of the English Channel to swell the numbers of our bursting at the seams small country - although they managed to stop the supreme fighting machine that was the German army, making the crossing 80 years ago. Funny that!
At the same time, we are being threatened with conscription to fight Russia! Hello? Are we are at war with Russia? News to me! Quite frankly, the Russians can come right on over and take over as far as I'm concerned - Putin could not possibly be any worse than the woke, socialist, corrupt totalitarians running the country into the ground right now.
Amazing what difference a couple of generations can make, isn't it?
“The compliance cult was never founded on science at all. It was rooted in various forms of magical thinking and mental illness, buttressed by authorities who weren’t accustomed to anyone questioning their orders.”
Just one of many keepers from this essay.
Thanks.
I left medicine because of the vaccine. I haven't gone back because of the masks. Turns out too much cognitive dissonance is bad for my health. Kudos to those powering through the farce. Fie on those who don't realize how farcical they've become.
I agree it requires at least some bit of strength to carry on with the mask farce (provided we *know* it's a farce to begin with). But I think it's also like a sip from the Pierian Spring: a small draught could be worse than no draught at all. If you play along without admitting its stupid, your burn whatever's left of your credibility and trustworthiness.
As others have, I offer my best wishes to your friend.
I have experienced the "mind-melding" moment you describe in this essay so many times. Each time this happens, I almost always immediately feel as though I am in the presence of a new friend, not just an acquaintance. At the very least, it's always a relief.
Thanks, Bridgette.
It's weird, right? So much of our experiences of other people is nonverbal, maybe even ethereal. When our mind becomes clear enough of garbage, I think it becomes possible to "sense" the friend/enemy position with little in the way of explicit data to go on.
(And yes, I mean something like ESP. WoooOOOOoooo...)
HAHAHAHAA.
"Tonight’s debate question: ‘Fire departments exist for the purpose of setting buildings on fire.’
Okay, let’s hear from the pro-side first..."
.
So, ah. yeah. About that...
https://pastormike.substack.com/p/firing-the-fire-board-part-deux
What a wild ride...I broke down at 'strategically retarded antivirus amulet' - they will never be anything else...lol
Thanks, Dan. Just getting familiar with your own work.
We got this, though. We will win.
Thank you for your kind and empowering words. I agree whole heartedly. We will win this and for exactly the reasons you point out. The pile up is unbearable. Who will shoulder the burden of the rediculous lies when it only takes a few words to bust it wide open? As Liz Dickson and Heather Heying pointed out last week, the emergency act ruling in Canada was a revelation. Not even an elite appointed judge will run cover for their lies. The industrial-hate-complex is the desperate end stage occupation of our minds. But the truth is if it were not for the force mutliplier of every crazy person I know who ran directly into fire I am not sure where this would be today. But it sure feels good to laugh at the absurdity of it. I couldnt laugh for two years. It's like a purgation. Back then I accepted that I may never reap the fruits of dissidents, but I knew my children would. And the 'lizards' who pray on our misfortune, will never want anything as much as I want my children to be free. That's why we can laugh today at their 'strategically retarded antivirus amulet'. Because we can see our dawn breaking. They can keep their emergency acts of magical thinking and fear and we will keep our reason and our love and we will bring in the new day.
It’s the FEAR factor that bows to a FALSE protocol. Thanks for the post.This is the first I’ve heard of you. Looking forward to more. Don’t stay too long at the fair lol.
Agreed, Judith. Weirdly, I think the nighttime routine points to the idea that a lot of their fear is rooted in fear that the public (i.e crazy masker family members of patients) will rat them out. Total Stazi East Germany vibe.
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Theodore Dalrymple
It is a long story, but I ended up out of the hospital from Covid and with a new doctor in Nov, 2021. Every time I see him, he was wearing the silly mask, except it didn’t cover his nose so he could breathe. Maybe he pulled it up when it mattered (around other medical staff) but with a patient, down it was. It makes me laugh. He is a D.O. and his recommendation for everything is lots of walking.
The natural gas is OUR resource. We are fools to sell it to anyone. Restricting this is a win for Americans.