You Are Not Alone

 

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