Mister Roboto
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I guess all the ‘fifth-wave feminists’ are rejoicing that the mask mandates will force Burkas on men an infinitum.
As someone who has always enjoyed looking at attractive young male faces, that’s one thing about the masks I’m pretty sure I hate. In fact, I suspect the reason I talked myself into believing that the face-cloths are anything more than the modern-day equivalent of a medieval bird-mask was so that I could stand the fact that this was now going to be a “thing” that will probably be with us for a long, long time.
The bird-mask analogy just occurred to me today. Odd that it took an entire year before that happened.
There was also the fact that Chris Martenson came out in favor of masking pretty early on, and he always struck me as someone who tries to stay very fact-based. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be wrong about some things.
I’m probably right on the border of bargaining and depression. Only in my case, it’s anxiety instead of classic depression. I suffer from lifelong low-key generalized anxiety disorder anyway.
Well, yeah, that is a pretty charged word. I thought I might soften the blow by putting it in quotes, but apparently not.
I’ve been thinking lately about why it is “doomer” forums such as this seem to have drifted into what might be characterized as a “Trumpist” direction while the blue-state big-city types who care about things such as peak oil and climate change seem to have drifted away.
Well, “Trumpism” is pretty much conservative nationalism, and one big reason why conservative nationalism might be more popular right now is that in a regime of declining available energy, globalism as it has been functioning since the end of World War II increasingly leaves ordinary people in the nations of the world holding the bag. Meanwhile, the comfortable classes who are momentarily benefiting from continued globalism (their turn to be thrown under the bus will come soon enough) are increasingly predisposed to indulge the pretense that “everything is just fine” or “all our problems can be solved with a little bit of determination and elbow-grease”. So one can tell things are starting to get tight and desperate.
There’s also the fact that all the different factions who have come together under the Trump banner each have their own motivations for doing so, and some of them, such as the religious right and the alt-right, are pretty difficult for people like me not to find rather unsavory. So the blue-state big-city soy-eaters see a movement in this direction on blogs they have been following for a while and then decide to pay attention to other things instead. And all the while, the way quite a few of this crowd have been reacting to rise of Trumpism have lamentably belied their claims of being “the educated people, the reality-based people, the rational people”. And as we all know, the divide created by how we should respond to the very real Covid-19 international health crisis has not only sharpened this divide, but turned it into an out-of-control merry-go-round of pure bewilderment.
So wherefore people like me who want to be “educated, reality-based, and rational” for real, not just as a vapid political posture? I’m still not entirely sure about the answer to that, but I am sure that I will be here always trying to figure that out until the day comes that none of it matters anymore, however that day may come.
The police would have been able to stop you and question your intent if you ventured outside of you home. I found it laughable that you could legally comply by saying you were “off to buy booze, weed or fast food” and these would all be valid, essential destinations for such an excursion.
Oh, I would be fine then, because if weed were legal in Wisconsin, I would always be off to buy some weed! (As someone who was a teenager in the Reagan eighties, the idea of the police following me all the way to weed-store to make sure I was being a good little citizen is ironic and hilarious. Maybe they would even give me a ride so that I wouldn’t have to wait for the bus!)
Getting the shot is very much The Correct And Fashionable Thing To Do among all my blue-state big-city friends on Facebook. This is one of the very few times in my life that I am glad I am as marginal a person in society as I am.
@madamski: There’s a “share” function underneath all YouTube videos that makes it so that you can even determine what time the video you embed will start playing.@Germ: Thanks, I was able to access that, even on clunky, obsolete old Windoze XP. It seems as though India “farted around and found out” WRT using vs. not using Ivermectin. As for the institutionalization of hypochondria in the USA….We really are a nation of fads over here, so I’m hoping this will turn out to be just another one of those annoying fads {/knock on simulated wood}. I think people are starting to get it that a lot of it is just theater, even though it isn’t fashionable to come out and say so just yet.
@Everybody: Well, a cashier at the grocery store just told me that the husband of somebody she knows got the vaccine and died a few days later. It’s kind of easy to shrug at reports of people dying of the vaccine you see on the Internet because, well, people say all kinds of things on the Internet. But when something people are saying on the Internet is also something you heard about from your own personal grapevine (especially somebody like me who doesn’t talk to other people very much), well, that’s when the “something ominous and intense is happening” music from the old “Star Trek” series starts playing in your head!
Can anybody give me the Cliff’s Notes version of the letter from the Indian doctor? I’m stuck with Windows XP for what appears to be the remainder of my days in this world, so there are some things I just can’t access.
From the Denninger piece:
Instead of what we’re doing we should have — and must, right now and today — immediately hand out Ivermectin and Budesonide (inhaled) to anyone who appears to be sick with Covid-19, scrap all of the existing alleged “vaccines” pending study of the nucleocapsid portion of the virus and look to see if an inactivated poly-nucleocapsid cocktail is pathogenic. If it is not then for those who want said shot and will benefit from it without blocking natural infections that perfect immunity in the population as a whole, which include only those older and morbid, we should develop and offer that instead of what we’re doing now through regular process, relying on prophylaxis and early treatment in the interim. Yes, it will take several years to do so but that’s the only correct path to take given the scientific evidence and we must do it now.
I really do believe that this is what we would have done 20-30 years ago, and we wouldn’t have had any of this lockdown hoogledy-poogledy. And we would have had the contagion under control in good time and order. (But this guy is still an asshole for advocating nuking China. Anybody who advocates the offensive use of nuclear weapons for any reason is an asshole.)
Pfizer has essentially Reverse Engineered Ivermectin into a patented drug, what a shock.
Well, at least they’re reinventing the right wheel. They’ll just make it a lot more expensive than the original wheel, is all. 😛
True statement on Twitter today:
AOC manufactured propaganda that the left is “happy” with Joe Biden and the MSM is running this message non stop
Since I will be home from work in time to see it, I am morbidly curious as to what propaganda pResident Biden will be catapulting in his address to the nation at nine (eastern time) tonight? Probably a lot of singing of the praises of the vaccination campaign, for starters.
Well, as much as I would like to see the medical-industrial complex use the tools they already have to treat Covid (HCQ, Ivermectin, et. al.), perhaps I should be glad that Pfizer is working on some profit-generating equivalent that will be acceptable to the money-seeking mandarins? I suppose that all depends on how well it works. That said, it’s difficult not to be a little dubious about the prospect of “reinventing the wheel”.
I don’t see the DNc able to recover its brand name fast enough to put a populist candidate into office. Meanwhile, the GOP did just that, albeit unwillingly, in 2016. It’s ahead of the curve. If we have elections in 2024, the strength is on the GOP’s side, imo.
I have to agree, based purely on a dispassionate computation of the political situation. A certain poster around here is fond of maintaining that the Republican Party is completely and entirely out of power on account of the momentary realignment resulting from the most recent election. This evaluation conveniently overlooks the fact that the Dem majority in the House shrunk and that the majority in the Senate consists of one vote that Joe Manchin is bound and determined to do everything in his power to undermine. But the big overlook here is that the Dems miserably failed to make any inroads on majorities Republicans have in statehouses around the country and the fact that Donald Trump despite losing did manage to win more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
And do you know why I think that is? Because what political resistance there has been so far to the lockdown response to Covid has been desultorily coalescing under the banner of Trumpism (or “conservative nationalism”, if you want to call the movement what it actually is). Meanwhile, the blue-state big-city neo-liberal establishment has made the lockdown/ vaccination response their political baby. (And how does that make me feel as someone whose current mindset is largely a product of “Team Blue”? Very sad and anxious.) Not to mention that the globalists represented by HideEmbarrass regard Flyover Country working people as entirely expendable.
I don’t think we’ll see Trump ever run for the Oval Office again based on his health (he’s an old guy who has never been very big on taking good care of himself). But “Trumpism” ain’t going away, whether people like me like that or not.
And as for me personally, one thing about the way I’ve been thinking lately that is certainly sub-rational (irrational) is my unwillingness to accept the fact that the normalcy of the recent past to which I have become accustomed to living in as an adult, went bye-bye over the course of 2020. And it’s not coming back, because too much has changed and too much is changing. What’s happening right now is the spiritual equivalent of a surging tsunami that is simply going to do its thing for good or for ill before it finally dissipates. And I need to accept that and stop thinking that singing from Ye Olde Hymnal will bring that old normalcy back.
Sorry about the choppy wording in the last post, I’m pretty much on my way out the door to work right now. 🙂
John Day: Thanks for the alternative information about India. As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick said in his most recent blog-post, I can believe the Western media is exaggerating the dire nature of what’s happening in India because they are desperate to convince people that locking down is the right way to go, and if the public ever believes otherwise, then it will be “Katy bar the door” for our establishment elites!
Confederate flag-wavers can be right about things every once in a while just like purple-haired hyper-wokesters can be right about things every once in a while.
As authorities dismiss study after study, it has become clear. The drug’s rejection is not based on science, data or the experience of many doctors. Instead, a disinformation campaign is raging to demonize the drug and belittle studies that support it.
trialsitenews.com/we-have-a-covid-lifeline-the-powers-wont-allow-it/I know, and it’s heart-breaking and anxiety making in the extreme. :-((((
@Germ: For the more aggressive variants, I’m guessing that earlier treatment is also highly beneficial.
With regard to the recovery, the velocity of money still isn’t what it used to be, but considering the effect of the mass lockdowns of a year ago, we’re probably fortunate we have any recovery at all. I remember the way those unemployment numbers just mushroomed as though a nuclear warhead had been detonated somewhere. That was when I had my first faint glimmerings of questioning the wisdom of the lockdown strategy. Unfortunately, when the people protesting lockdowns were bringing assault-rifles and Confederate flags to their rallies, I and many others came to see the lockdown issue through a partisan lens. Since about the start of this year, I have been trying to form a clear picture of the coronavirus situation free of “memefication”. The amount of personal discernment one must employ is daunting, but for the biggest public health crisis of the twenty-first century it is a necessity.
And I think a lot of people on the true left who usually don’t drink establishment Kool-Aid are this time is because it’s a tenet of leftyism to invest one’s trust in the mechanisms of science. While that’s certainly very rational in its intention, the problem with it, at least in this case, is that it’s possible to forget that science is a tool harnessed by various human motivations, not all of them necessarily wise or benign.
The silencing of dissent is certainly real. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick in the comments for his most recent blog-entry reported that a doctor in the UK reported him to the medical licensing people over there trying to get him “struck off” for his blog. The licensing people opted to take no such action, but Dr. Kendrick told the commenter to whom he was replying that he had to be very careful about what he will and won’t say on his blog.
Another thing to keep in mind about India, though, is because it is so poor, there are very likely many Covid deaths that happen in silence in remote places and so don’t get counted. Right now, the worst variant currently present in the USA is the Brazilian one (though the British one is currently dominant). I’m probably going to be more than a little bit concerned if the Indian variant (yes, they have their own variant) ever arrives on our shores at some point.
And plus tempered glass is really, really durable. (I like my lineoleum-tile kitchen floor. Stuff I drop on it very rarely breaks thanks to its shock-absorbing qualities.)
I’m still kind of on the fence about face-masking. You see, I work in a grocery store, and a lot of medically vulnerable people shop there, including senior citizens. Even if universal masking of customers and employees only helps a little teeny-tiny smidgeon, then perhaps that smidgeon is worthwhile. Also, as a 54-year-old type-2 diabetic who works there full time, I am technically one of those medically vulnerable people! Same with stores such as Walmart and CVS where prescription drugs are dispensed.
Fascism and irrationality:
I added the following comment to the video: A sound and substantial video, but I would like to add two caveats: 1) The popularly cited studies “disproving” the effectiveness of HCQ against Covid have been either jury-rigged to fail or even deliberately constructed lies. https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/04/24/covid19-taking-stock/ 2) Hillary Clinton’s partisans proved themselves more than a little bit capable of some very real irrationality in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. (“RussiaRussiaRussia!”) It took a great deal of equanimity not to be thoroughly disgusted throughout most of 2017.
@DocR: Thanks for the 411. India is certainly having a worse time because as a poorer country than the UK or any Eurozone country, their healthcare system is much harder-pressed to handle the stress of this public-health crisis.
@Germ: What I saw in that video was both police and demonstrators being pretty militant, and the militance of the police seemed more defensive in nature (even if they were just a little to bit too eager to whack people with those batons of theirs). If those would have been US cops, then you would have seen some real police violence, I’m pretty sure!
“Covid 19: Taking Stock” by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Unfortunately, when I look to the voices on ‘the other side’ for balance they seem to have gone just as mad in the opposite directions. ‘Vaccination will kill hundreds of millions, women will be made sterile, it will drive the virus to mutate into a deadly, deadly, deadly, killer.’ Look, I am perfectly willing to accept that these vaccines were rushed through and may cause some significant health problems – some deaths. Which have already happened. But nothing destroys credibility faster than screaming blue bloody murder.
And about the time the people don’t believe a word the authorities say, a major cris will come along running smack into the Cry Wolf! symdrome.
Ain’t that just always how it is? Once my mother passes from this world, I’m probably going to be increasingly indifferent to what ultimately happens to me or this trashy, narcissistic society of ours. My attitude will be, when my number is up, my number is up, that’s all.
The vaccines are being sold to us as a way of arriving at herd immunity in a technologically-assisted way. However, the thing that would accomplish this, namely as many people in the world getting vaccinated as possible, probably won’t happen if Big Pharma succeeds in blocking generic vaccines that poorer countries such as India would be able to afford. So perhaps the real goal of these untested vaccines is really to make Big Pharma execs richer than Croesus?
My Boomer older brother is among those who believe that everybody will be driving those electric cars within five years, so I guess the propaganda remains ubiquitous and effective. But then again, we live in a propaganda hyper-saturated age, so I shouldn’t be surprised. And so I’m not.
@absolute galor: I didn’t read yesterday’s NYT article, but I saw the headline when I was working at the grocery store yesterday, and it seemed to me the subtext of the article was, “If you don’t want to get the vaccine, then that means you’re a Trumpster trashcan!” I think the reason so many people are jumping on the vaccine wagon is that they are desperately needy for social permission to “go back to normal”. I really do think that at some point, people are going to need to realize that recovering any semblance of normalcy is going to mean learning how to live with Covid.
But what makes the prospect of learning how to live with it so daunting is that our picture of the science is so muddled and cloudy thanks to corporate-greed economics and establishment power-politics. On one extreme you have Hillary Clinton partisans who believe the conventional wisdom to be wisdom because it’s conventional and endorsed by establishment publications, and on the other extreme you have Trumpster whackos who think gynecological problems are caused by having sex with demons and witches who appear to one in dreams and that the vaccination program is a deliberate conspiracy to instigate a mass genocide. Parsing out a science- and reality-based picture of the truth about the pandemic becomes a daunting task for those of us who realize that there’s more to dealing with a contagious respiratory virus than regurgitating Twitter-memes.
And this goes back to what I was saying yesterday about living in an age of profound decadence, incompetence, and irrationality. If Covid would have happened thirty or even twenty years ago, I don’t think there would be this much cultural insanity around it. But I knew an age like this was coming as far back as 1994 when I was a socially-maladjusted 27-year-old. I knew back then that it was going to be bad, but of course, I didn’t imagine it would be this bad. Though I probably didn’t want to think too deeply about how bad the distant future was going to be when I already had enough on my plate dealing with my rather deep and intense social and spiritual maladjustment!
@madamski: Well, some people apparently just like to Shout at the Devil! Biden’s strings are certainly being pulled by somebody. He’s clearly in no sort of shape to actually lead the country. Will he represent some kind of improvement over Trump? I want to hope so, but I’m inclined to agree with Lefty Twitter that four years of HideEmbarrass will lead to somebody who will make Trump seem like “the good old days”.
If Coke were to ditch the HFCS in favor of real sugar (think old old Coke, New Coke was just a bait-and-switch way of hiding the switch to HFCS), I bet people would drink it no matter what politics they were advocating!
Dexamethasone has probably saved a hell of a lot of lives in the past year or so. (That’s the steroid they use to stop Covid-pneumonia-driven cytokine storms, in case anyone doesn’t know.) It shouldn’t be the only line of treatment when other things are available, but if it and steroids like it weren’t in the picture, we would probably be looking at some real and serious damage to the fabric of society from all the lives lost.
But, to be completely honest, what else can you expect from a society whose entire basis has become “I WA&T SUMMO@R!!1!”
My take on why the post-modern USA is such a clusterfuck: I don’t think it’s really any sort of conspiracy, we simply live in an age of profound decadence, incompetence, and intellectual madness. This happens to all wealthy hegemonic societies in their decline phase. The USA and its Western allies are the biggest, richest, and most complex hegemon that has existed so far, so of course our decadent decline is going the be the doozy to end all doozies. Covid showed me that we are truly sun-downing on account of the fact that we have the ability to treat this serious public-health menace very easily, but for reasons that are difficult to grasp on a visceral, emotional level, we refuse to do so (or at least not until someone is in the hospital at death’s door unable to breathe).
