THE UNWANTED GIFT

This week, I listened at 1.75x to the two-and-a-quarter-hour Tucker Carlson podcast with the pro football player, Aaron Rodgers, which tens of millions of other people have also heard. The uncardigan-ed, brusquer, still living Mr. Rodgers discussed fame, public misperception, bureaucratic capture, conspiracies, censorship and our dysfunctional, bought media and political system. He also described unconventional forms of self-care, including fasting, darkness retreats and ayahuasca sessions.

But principally, Rodgers and Carlson discussed where society is headed following Coronamania. Rodgers, who made a strong showing on Jeopardy and was widely condemned for declining the Covid injections, spoke clearly, directly and logically throughout most of the conversation about the Covid overreaction, especially the shots. (He waffled about whether some of the jabs were saline placebos).

The following themes regarding post-Scamdemic life stuck out, either by inclusion or omission, and made me ask myself some questions.

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Rodgers opened by saying that he was ready to show compassion to, and forgive, those who not only went along with the Covid craziness but also vilified those, like him, who refused to comply. Carlson agreed that he wanted to be magnanimous toward those who bought the Scam.

Unlike Rodgers and Carlson, I never cared that people criticized me for not injecting. In general, I care very little if other people like me or not; I learned early in life that you can’t please everybody. Additionally, I was confident that I knew more and had better judgment than did the shot supporters. The vaunted virus never scared me. Thus, I was never going to take the experimental shots, no matter what incentives or disincentives the government presented or what others thought of me.

But it bothered me that governments demanded my adult kids and other young people to take unneeded, experimental shots. I also hated hearing the media and government lie repeatedly and all of the NPI theater, especially the closure of public places and the theft, from hundreds of millions of people worldwide, of their livelihoods and formative and/or enjoyable life experiences, as well as a very big chunk of middle-class wealth.

I’ve thought about whether I should forgive those who took away normal life from others, or who supported doing so, and/or who demanded that other people inject.

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I wondered what Rodgers and Carlson meant by “showing compassion” or “forgiving?” Do these entail an out-loud statement including the c word or the f word? Or are compassion and forgiveness emotions that the compassionate forgiver simply feels in his/her heart, and/or perhaps manifests by speaking in a gentle tone?

Can you forgive someone for showing poor judgment during the past four years and still trust their overall judgment?

Is there such a thing as forgiving but not forgetting? Or is that just a cliche?

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As a quarterback, Aaron Rodgers knows that even if he throws the ball perfectly, a play will fail if his teammate is unready to receive what he’s dealing out. While Rodgers wants to forgive the NPI and shot supporters, most in that group aren’t ready to receive what he’s transmitting.

Most who supported Coronamania have no regrets. They strongly believe, as Roger Daltrey strongly sang in Baba O’Reilly, that they “don’t need to be forgiven.”

Many still insist that the NPIs and shots “saved millions of lives.” Two weeks ago, The New York Times held onto this grandiose net opinion as does a dog with a bone in its teeth. So do many others.

Last week, for example, I got an email from Bob B, a nationally prominent attorney, resolutely lauding the NPIs and shots for saving “tens of thousands, if not millions” of lives. Bob told me I was “so naive” and advised me to vaxx, ostensibly for my own good; this, despite four-years of collective experience showing how unthreatening The Virus is, in addition to widespread “vaxx” failure.

I told Bob that he had poor command of the facts; that I had nothing to worry about because the virus was badly overhyped and because I was younger and fitter than he was. Therefore, I saw only downside to the shots and would never inject.

Most attorneys and judges know very little about science. While Bob was taking whatever college classes he took and, later, being a legal and business deal maker, I was studying biology, nutrition and sociology, hanging out with very frail people in nursing homes before litigating cases solo and growing food and flowers for a living. Thus, I saw a larger scientific and social Scamdemic picture, as well as evidentiary flaws in the pro-NPI and shot narrative that Bob, and many like him, still fail to apprehend. And probably never will.

When a forgiver’s intended targets feel no remorse, forgiveness is an unwanted gift. It resembles a garish garment or a book about a topic that doesn’t interest the recipient. It may feel good to forgive others. But absolution falls on deaf ears if the one forgiven feels they haven’t done anything wrong. Expressing forgiveness might even make the forgiven feel patronized by and thus, resent, the forgiver.

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Very few of those who supported the NPIs and shots will reciprocally apologize for the harm the NPIs or shots have caused, or for hating on NPI/shot opponents. Even on their deathbeds, those who may belatedly see how senseless and harmful the NPIs and shots were will hold fast to their prior perspectives and vilification. Or they’ll forgive themselves, by saying that "We couldn't have known" that the virus threatened only a very small, identifiable segment of the populace, and that the NPIs and shots wouldn’t help but would, instead, cause deep, lasting harm. Yesterday, I had yet another such discussion with a neighbor. I’m so weary of this untenable alibi.

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Does forgivability depend on the intent of the wrongdoer? Specifically, if one forgives those gullible and fearful people who bought the Scam, should s/he also forgive those who sold the NPIs and shots, even though they knew these measures were phony? Should we turn the other cheek on the grandest imaginable scale?

Rodgers and Carlson imply that, in contrast to Scamdemic buyers, the Scamdemic’s sellers don’t deserve mercy. Withholding forgiveness from the Scamdemic’s orchestrators feels just, though it’s not unconditional or Biblical.

In secular speak, withholding forgiveness is “judgmental.” And it’s fashionable to hate judgmental people; though, paradoxically, labeling someone “judgmental” entails judging them.

Like it or not, our society judges people every day. For example, if we’re not supposed to judge others, shouldn’t we empty the prisons? Those who effected the Scam have done far more social, psychological, physical and economic damage than has any incarcerated individual.

And if judging others is intrinsically wrong, commentary-based media should be banned. News outlets incessantly signal which side they see as virtuous and which has no redeeming value.

Is forgiveness a moral imperative, such that NPI and shot opponents must forgive even the WHO and WEF globalists, the federal and state pols and bureaucrats, the DOD/biosecurity operatives, the Pharma execs, the media and everyone else who cooked up and implemented the NPIs and the injection crusade?

If they’re forgiven, won’t the Scamdemic sellers—or their successors—just do more evil? Deterrence animates criminal law.

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Though most NPI and shot backers feel they acted righteously, at least “given what they knew at the time,” and thus, don’t value forgiveness, NPI and shot detractors should continue to remind everyone that these measures failed and foreseeably caused much harm. We should not only take a victory lap, but a years-long series of them. We should metaphorically spike the Scamdemic ball, as Rodgers and other NFL-ers do when they outperform defenses.

At this stage, there’s an extremely high-stakes battle to see whose Covid narrative will be remembered. Those who predicted that the NPIs’ and shots’ failure and wreckage deserve to win, hands down.

But the NPI and jab supporters’ profiteers and the government have a big lead. Their false narrative has been widely disseminated and accepted. And they’ll spend countless dollars—corporate and public—and time to reinforce their Scamdemic lies. The media will, as always, be their ally. Hence, NPI and shot skeptics are badly outresourced.

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Is Rodgers/Carlson’s forgiveness strategic or wise, given that, per Dale Carnegie, you’re unlikely to influence people unless they like you? Do Rodgers and Carlson want to forgive in order to recruit allies in the ongoing narrative war?

Rodgers and Carlson suggest that mounting vaxx injuries will radicalize the masses. But it’s hard to know how many vaxx injuries the public would see as intolerable; or if vaxx injuries will exceed that threshold; or if they did, if the Pharma-bought media would continue to decline to report these injuries.

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Two days after I heard the Rodgers/Carlson conversation, I heard three minutes of a New York morning sports talk radio station WFAN’s segment mocking Rodgers. The three on-air males guffawed about Rodgers’ purported podcast lunacy. They compared him to Alex Jones and joked that he hung out with Kim Jong Un.

The media is entertainment and narrative posing as information. Instead of verbally, gratuitously ganging up on Rodgers, the radio hosts should have specified what Rodgers has been wrong about. They would have come up empty. As far as I know, he’s been right about all things Covid, though he took too long to speak out.

One might think that, given the shots’ obvious failure, one of the radiocasters would break ranks and suggest that maybe Rodgers was onto something. But it’s socially safer for males in groups to conform, pigeon-hole, mock and marginalize than it is to conduct fair, thoughtful discussion. Women can also be groupthinkers with a mob mentality. I’ve heard that The View panel and audience routinely exhibit such behavior.

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Where you stand depends, in large part, on where you sit. Those, such as Rodgers, who are childless, seem more willing to let Covid bygones be bygones than are those who are parents of young people. The childless didn't see their kids lose opportunities during the past four years in ways that will permanently worsen their kids’ futures. Such losses are faits accomplis. Much other harm, flowing from Scamdemic social isolation and inflation/impoverishment, is preordained, even if these young people don't suffer vaxx injuries. Additional jab injuries remain a spectre haunting not only Europe, but much of the world.

It's also much easier to be gracious about Coronamania when your job didn’t disappear and you’re financially set for life, as with/are Rodgers and Carlson. The vast majority, who don’t have Rodgers’ and Carlson’s wealth, see daily that they’ve fallen behind economically during the past four years and that whatever savings they have will buy significantly less than they had hoped.

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Though it was conveniently unmentioned during the podcast, I heard that Carlson visited Trump just prior to the lockdowns and encouraged Trump to lock down. If true, though many love Trump, despite his Covid overreaction, and Carlson, for coyly not injecting, I'm still grudging on both Trump and Carlson for facilitating Coronamania. I don't care that they both have 100 million fans and make sense about some other stuff. Their early Covid overreaction was highly consequential.

Trump and Carlson apologists say that these two came around within a few months, much earlier than did most. True, but in March, 2020, they opened the door to the craziness. And once the crazy train left the station, it picked up hundreds of millions of passengers. Trump paid their fare by approving trillions in subsidies.

I haven’t heard either Carlson or Trump apologize for supporting lockdowns or explain why they did. Should those two be forgiven?  

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Our culture believes in/roots for happy endings. In this instance, Rodgers and Carlson endorse forgiveness, seemingly because they envision a society-wide Covid rapprochement.

But unlike the movies, real life often fails to yield harmonious resolution or justice.

Using various styles, good poems address hard truths. As I read in college, per Yeats, things fall apart. Or, going back to kindergarten, all the king's horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Maybe, given the Scamdemic’s destruction and the well-capitalized and narrative-controlling forces allied against the NPI and shot detractors, there’s no good way forward.

Even if hundreds of millions of NPI and shot backers eventually expressed unmitigated regret, much of the NPI/vaxx damage has already occurred. The time and wealth stolen in the name of crushing a virus is gone forever. In addition to the damage that’s already occurred, NPI-driven mass impoverishment, mental and physical health declines and falling birth rates portend additional damage. Billions of people have been set up to fail. 

Most people won’t link such damage to its Coronamania origins. Instead, the media will attribute the Covid overreaction’s effects to other phenomena, policies or individuals. Hence, most people will wrongly blame others, especially their political adversaries, for the economic stratification, social division and psychological and physical illnesses that the NPIs and shots caused.

Regardless of whether one forgives or not, NPI and shot opponents must continue to speak the truth. Doing so shows compassion for the overreaction’s many victims, whose artificially imposed challenges will continue for a very long time.