I grew up in a working class family. My father worked in a car assembly plant. His father was a coal miner who died of black lung in his early forties. As do most people, I adopted my parents’ political affiliation, and identified with the ostensible party of the working man, i.e., the Democrats.
“Covid mortality has been largely driven by overeating and insufficient activity”
^this is the inconvenient truth that is essentially mainstream taboo.
I love the Animal House analogy, btw. I used one a week or two ago. When it becomes clear to the masses how insane all of this has been, govt attitude will be the equivalent of “you f***ed up. You trusted us.” Accountability ain’t their thing.
I loved your account of your family and your growing up. We may be close in age. I became a flaming liberal when I moved to the Washington, DC area to work for NASA in 1980. But I was always bothered by the bland generalizations spouted by other Democrats my age. Something about their contempt for this country hurt me. My father had been a Marine in WWII who'd been a radio operator in the Central Pacific. He'd grown up a poor ragamuffin in DC and made his way up in life by working. I never heard him spout anything like the anti-war, pro-abort, lefty trash my buddies thought was so self evident. Something didn't smell right, even though I was immersed in the NPR-listening crowd. They seemed much too self satisfied, and to use a word I've come to hate, privileged. I didn't see how they could claim to know what life was like for "the poor". So I volunteered in different ways in the District, to try to know people as individuals instead of cardboard cut outs.
I came to the conclusion that the left's caring about people extended as far as the front section of the Washington Post. I too saw the destruction wrought by promoting fatherless homes, that young unmarried pregnant women wanted their babies, and were horribly scarred by abortion. I saw more nobility in the faces of the Vietnam vets I knew than in the self satisfied pacifists and animal rightists in the coffee houses.
You really put your finger on it here. The fear of covid has done so much to break society up into lonely factions, I don't remember this much animosity flung around since the Vietnam war ended. And for what? Flattening the curve? Did we flatten it? Who could have foreseen eighteen months ago that leaky, immoral, dangerous vaccines would be "mandated"?
Every day I get up I thank God for the breath in my body. My husband and I are both recovering from the Delta variant as I write, we're unvaxxed, and it's gone a lot better than we expected. I want to encourage people: take care of your health by keeping the fat off, keep active if you can, but mainly we need each other, at church or in our clubs. Mask if it seems to you that it helps, take precautions, but try to live like covid is an overblown Boogeyman. We need to throw fear back in the face of the idiot media.
Thanks Mark, well articulated. I am part of that laptop WFH class that has benefited beyond any of my co workers imaginations from Covid policy. And it's remarkable the extent to which they wholly accept and continue to push it. It's become a form of medieval penance; by pursuing it in the name of "public safety" they not only get to feel safer, but less guilty about how greatly they've benefited.
My background was similar to yours - although I never worked at all of the places you did. I agree with alot of your observations about the Democratic Party. Its the big reason Reagan won in '80. Reagan democrats - abandoned Carter and Mondale in droves. Unfortunately - the Neo Cons inherited the post Reagan era and started us the "Forever war" tract.
I think social media/eleite media really elected Biden. Because - they were able to take a lifeless and cognitively deficient candidate and make him appear vital and locked in. Now we are seeing the problem with letting the media run the election.
Your experience in the urban area - its an interesting experience. The elite liberals dont get an opportunity to see someone pull a knife on you - or beat the snot out of you to take your basketball away. They live in a protective environment. Rules are for "thee" but not for "me".
The best all world experience is to volunteer or work in an emergency department at a large hospital. You get to see how the whole world lives. Because wealthy people get sick and so do the poor and less well off. There is nothing like seeing a young man in his teens come in shot about 5-6 times and watch his life slip away. Or see a young college girl with so much promise die in a car accident. But - you also see some great stories too, those of survival and compassion. Its quite an experience.
None of these experts - like Fauci or Walensky have real clinically accountable experience. these are government hacks. They have very limited ability to make clinical decisions. They are administrators. Their skills are do a good interview on MSNBC.
An excellent piece once again, Mark. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
In a recent interview Dr. Robert Malone brought up the point that the “experts” predicted a massive death toll in Sub Saharan Africa due to Covid. Yet, it didn’t occur. Why? First off, obesity isn’t an issue in this region. The vast majority of people are not obese. Diabetes is extremely rare. Heart disease is rare. In addition, the majority of adults have taken Ivermectin and other anti-virals for years (provided for free courtesy of Western pharmaceutical companies). As a whole the continent is only 2% vaxxed and likely to hat won’t grow much outside it North Africa. Of the roughly 200k deaths attributed to Covid most were in large population centers that had more Western influence - and thus more diet associated with the West and more obesity in those populations.
Happy to have found you on Substack. When I stopped seeing posts on Medium, I knew they tried to silence you. Did not renew my Medium subscription…we will not be silenced. Thank you…I look forward to your posts.
My spouse is a big city hospital nurse. A few weeks ago two different RNs in our city died from Covid - one I knew, the other I didn’t. (The one we knew personally was obese, and people at her funeral even made mention of her love of eating.)
The newspaper here made much of the younger RN (age 47) and how she “ate right and exercised” and took care of herself.
Curious, I looked up her picture online. Of course the poor lady was obese.
Great article Mark, thanks again. Congratulations on your transition. I think the only thing that may help turn their narrative is if Trump announces another run. On a dime, they will want to "discover" and "disclose" the horrors of the "rushed vaccines" he created to blame him for all the stupidity and the horrible worldwide problems he created. Short of that, I fear we will be closer to Australia sooner than our old country. We have an entire generation that has been schooled to accept and trust authority over their own freedom and liberty to make choices.
Excellent article. And I'm a sucker for all references to Animal House. I keep waiting for the NPR Democrats to come clean and say to the rest of us: "You fucked up. You trusted us." But I suspect I will be waiting forever for that to happen.
How do you convince a 70 year old dyed in the woold democrat that her party is no longer the party of the downtrodden and working class? I have lost my best friend over this coronovirus.
So, the Democratic Party is in control? And, not just in the United States, but around the world, eh? Probably not. It's probably more likely that the Democratic Party is a pawn of the globalist-elites who have pushed through draconian policies requiring proof of vaccination and/or a negative Covid test in multiple EU countries as well as Israel, Morocco and other countries where the American Democratic Party does not operate.
Great read: yes, fear is easy to root and evil gets it’s power from fear . Not a good equation if risk evaluation and critical thinking are absent or abandoned.
“Covid mortality has been largely driven by overeating and insufficient activity”
^this is the inconvenient truth that is essentially mainstream taboo.
I love the Animal House analogy, btw. I used one a week or two ago. When it becomes clear to the masses how insane all of this has been, govt attitude will be the equivalent of “you f***ed up. You trusted us.” Accountability ain’t their thing.
I loved your account of your family and your growing up. We may be close in age. I became a flaming liberal when I moved to the Washington, DC area to work for NASA in 1980. But I was always bothered by the bland generalizations spouted by other Democrats my age. Something about their contempt for this country hurt me. My father had been a Marine in WWII who'd been a radio operator in the Central Pacific. He'd grown up a poor ragamuffin in DC and made his way up in life by working. I never heard him spout anything like the anti-war, pro-abort, lefty trash my buddies thought was so self evident. Something didn't smell right, even though I was immersed in the NPR-listening crowd. They seemed much too self satisfied, and to use a word I've come to hate, privileged. I didn't see how they could claim to know what life was like for "the poor". So I volunteered in different ways in the District, to try to know people as individuals instead of cardboard cut outs.
I came to the conclusion that the left's caring about people extended as far as the front section of the Washington Post. I too saw the destruction wrought by promoting fatherless homes, that young unmarried pregnant women wanted their babies, and were horribly scarred by abortion. I saw more nobility in the faces of the Vietnam vets I knew than in the self satisfied pacifists and animal rightists in the coffee houses.
You really put your finger on it here. The fear of covid has done so much to break society up into lonely factions, I don't remember this much animosity flung around since the Vietnam war ended. And for what? Flattening the curve? Did we flatten it? Who could have foreseen eighteen months ago that leaky, immoral, dangerous vaccines would be "mandated"?
Every day I get up I thank God for the breath in my body. My husband and I are both recovering from the Delta variant as I write, we're unvaxxed, and it's gone a lot better than we expected. I want to encourage people: take care of your health by keeping the fat off, keep active if you can, but mainly we need each other, at church or in our clubs. Mask if it seems to you that it helps, take precautions, but try to live like covid is an overblown Boogeyman. We need to throw fear back in the face of the idiot media.
Thanks Mark, well articulated. I am part of that laptop WFH class that has benefited beyond any of my co workers imaginations from Covid policy. And it's remarkable the extent to which they wholly accept and continue to push it. It's become a form of medieval penance; by pursuing it in the name of "public safety" they not only get to feel safer, but less guilty about how greatly they've benefited.
My background was similar to yours - although I never worked at all of the places you did. I agree with alot of your observations about the Democratic Party. Its the big reason Reagan won in '80. Reagan democrats - abandoned Carter and Mondale in droves. Unfortunately - the Neo Cons inherited the post Reagan era and started us the "Forever war" tract.
I think social media/eleite media really elected Biden. Because - they were able to take a lifeless and cognitively deficient candidate and make him appear vital and locked in. Now we are seeing the problem with letting the media run the election.
Your experience in the urban area - its an interesting experience. The elite liberals dont get an opportunity to see someone pull a knife on you - or beat the snot out of you to take your basketball away. They live in a protective environment. Rules are for "thee" but not for "me".
The best all world experience is to volunteer or work in an emergency department at a large hospital. You get to see how the whole world lives. Because wealthy people get sick and so do the poor and less well off. There is nothing like seeing a young man in his teens come in shot about 5-6 times and watch his life slip away. Or see a young college girl with so much promise die in a car accident. But - you also see some great stories too, those of survival and compassion. Its quite an experience.
None of these experts - like Fauci or Walensky have real clinically accountable experience. these are government hacks. They have very limited ability to make clinical decisions. They are administrators. Their skills are do a good interview on MSNBC.
This is excellent. Thanks for writing.
An excellent piece once again, Mark. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
In a recent interview Dr. Robert Malone brought up the point that the “experts” predicted a massive death toll in Sub Saharan Africa due to Covid. Yet, it didn’t occur. Why? First off, obesity isn’t an issue in this region. The vast majority of people are not obese. Diabetes is extremely rare. Heart disease is rare. In addition, the majority of adults have taken Ivermectin and other anti-virals for years (provided for free courtesy of Western pharmaceutical companies). As a whole the continent is only 2% vaxxed and likely to hat won’t grow much outside it North Africa. Of the roughly 200k deaths attributed to Covid most were in large population centers that had more Western influence - and thus more diet associated with the West and more obesity in those populations.
Love this article Mark!.
I just posted a couple of key paragraphs from it at Glenn Greenwald's blog a couple minutes ago.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/an-nba-star-and-new-yorks-governor/comments#comment-3080542
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Thanks for posting this Mark. Really great insights.
Happy to have found you on Substack. When I stopped seeing posts on Medium, I knew they tried to silence you. Did not renew my Medium subscription…we will not be silenced. Thank you…I look forward to your posts.
My spouse is a big city hospital nurse. A few weeks ago two different RNs in our city died from Covid - one I knew, the other I didn’t. (The one we knew personally was obese, and people at her funeral even made mention of her love of eating.)
The newspaper here made much of the younger RN (age 47) and how she “ate right and exercised” and took care of herself.
Curious, I looked up her picture online. Of course the poor lady was obese.
The epidemic is not Covid, it’s morbid obesity.
Great article Mark, thanks again. Congratulations on your transition. I think the only thing that may help turn their narrative is if Trump announces another run. On a dime, they will want to "discover" and "disclose" the horrors of the "rushed vaccines" he created to blame him for all the stupidity and the horrible worldwide problems he created. Short of that, I fear we will be closer to Australia sooner than our old country. We have an entire generation that has been schooled to accept and trust authority over their own freedom and liberty to make choices.
Excellent article. And I'm a sucker for all references to Animal House. I keep waiting for the NPR Democrats to come clean and say to the rest of us: "You fucked up. You trusted us." But I suspect I will be waiting forever for that to happen.
How do you convince a 70 year old dyed in the woold democrat that her party is no longer the party of the downtrodden and working class? I have lost my best friend over this coronovirus.
So, the Democratic Party is in control? And, not just in the United States, but around the world, eh? Probably not. It's probably more likely that the Democratic Party is a pawn of the globalist-elites who have pushed through draconian policies requiring proof of vaccination and/or a negative Covid test in multiple EU countries as well as Israel, Morocco and other countries where the American Democratic Party does not operate.
Other than that major flaw, good article.
Great read: yes, fear is easy to root and evil gets it’s power from fear . Not a good equation if risk evaluation and critical thinking are absent or abandoned.
Amazing and enjoyable read. Bravo