159 Comments

Nice story. But you are right. I never obeyed the lock down and went to work in a center the whole time. For one week during 2021 I felt off.. headache, just lousy so guess what.. I stayed HOME FROM WORK! Never wore a mask even though my county had a mask mandate. If a store wouldn't let me in without one I shopped elsewhere. Do exactly the opposite of whatever the government says is my motto!!

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Europeans are being told to reduce power usage to flatten the curve (seriously).

I think their governments have really got a bead on things this time. 😅

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Not that I want this to happen but would be interesting to see if we heard "15 days to flatten the curve" how that would go this time. Does my look like CA residents are obeying by reducing their electric usage.

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I have a friend in Cali who just told me the other day "Yeah, we are supposed to keep our thermostats at 78 degrees. I try to be a good citizen and do what is right, but you know that nobody else is trying to do the right thing, so why should I?" I am sure there is a free NEST thermostat from Google in Cali residents future.

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We live in Cali. My thermostat is not connected to third parties who can shut up down except the power company. Have friends who got “free “ thermostats. Power Co froze them at 80 degrees. No free lunch. Good luck with electric cars! Just don’t charge them!⚔️🤬⚔️

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Exactly the reason I won’t get one of those types of thermostats and I’m not in Cali. Gives big tech and Govt. Too much power over citizens. Glad I’m not there. I have an intolerance to heat which is why I hate AZ in summer. 78 too hot for me - I’d never get anything done!

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Except the ones that aren't, like the 'elite.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqnKKJ8za1U

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One of the few stacks that doesn't beg for subscribers to pay

And one of the few actually worth reading. Delightful, as usual.

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Thanks, NJ.

I don't criticize those who seek paid subscribers. The mainstream media SUCKS.. People need to vote against the MSM with their dollars and support people who write truth.

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Hear hear

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Besides people need to eat, and drink and drive. :)

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Or drive and then NOT have a drink... in a sketchy AirB&B.

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especially in states where you can drive ! Soon Californians will have to go on bicycle or foot or buy an Amish buggy and horse

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"They" are going after the Amish now... over in Bird-in-Hand, IICR... for selling natural food.

$300,000... using tax dollars and bureaucracy against the people

https://ussanews.com/2022/08/19/federal-agents-raid-organic-amish-farm-in-pa/

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I saw that. Horrendous. They are trying whatever to poison us. Europe is going to freeze this winter, in Switzerland you can go to jail for heating your house, curious what the UK is going to become with Truss, and here I am grateful to live in a red state and will vote accordingly

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Is it the cost of petrol or some new rules in California.

Los Angeles as I recall is all cars.

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it sure was when I was there. More standing than driving. In 7 or so years CA can no longer sell cars on gas, then they will all be standing there without electricity LOL. So if they hve a bicycle with them in their useless cars, they will make it home. Or good running shoes.

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I agree, but being on a low fixed income would mean no Substack for me. I didn't buy the local paper before, either.

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Yes they do. Paid propagandists.

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Indeed. Many cases have gone to court and the MSWhores say, they're not really for information but entertainment.

(GMO) Bread

and

lots of Circus

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A new friend named Cairn forwarded this essay to me and I found it (as you noted) delightful. I agree completely with your comment regarding our fellow travelers on Substack.com. While many have wisdom and insight galore, all too many have become capitalist hucksters and ego-driven hacks. I get so bored with those (Chris Hedges comes to mind) who insist on posting references to books they have written and moth-eaten Substack posts they resurrect for our boredom.

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I just write because I have to say it...I don't want money. With it brings new ills. Like the IRS. They probably hired all those agents and gave them guns to come after all the people who get money for putting airwords out there.

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I get the need to make money.

Having a few extra bucks can mean the difference between the inn above a bakery and a sketch B&B.

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His wife is nicer than me. I tell Hubs..you can rent that crap when you are alone. But with me? Yeah, no. We were in Houma LA last Jan 2021 and I thought I would walk from our Air Bnb to a plantation. Well, google maps didn't tell me I would be walking though a neighborhood or part of town where I would be hollered at and cat called many times. It was pretty scary, with them driving by and hanging out the windows. Those jerks are just lucky I am so calm, cool and collected. If I wasn't, I could have shot one of them because I don't go anywhere without my little friend. I walked there but I would not walk back.

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I'm 66 years old and got the corona last year. It was like a mild flu. I've had the flu many times before. No big deal... I still don't personally know anyone that died of corona. Almost everyone that I know that was "vaccinated" still got corona and seemed sicker than I was. I read about excess death reports that are higher than usual, embalmers reporting blood clots in over 50% of the people they embalm and young people and athletes suddenly dying of heart attacks. "Unknown causes" is now the number one cause of death in some areas of Canada. Yet, big pharma and government are still pushing their vaccines and their mandates. The information that we get from the government is distilled to "take the vaccine". I gave up on taking orders from authority without questioning them when I was a very young boy. The government does not offer a quantitative analysis of the cost/benefit tradeoff. Big Pharma wanted 75 years to release their test results? It is clear that big pharma and government are actively hiding the relevant information and it is absolutely dystopian to me that this continues. The Scamdemic destroyed my faith in the medical establishment and the government. But I can still watch the happy face spin that the main stream media puts on it all. So strange!!!

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Steven…I am with you 100%. Like you, this scamdemic has completely destroyed my faith and trust in our government and the healthcare system. We left our family doctor of 20+ years during this and many of our beloved specialists “up and retired” (don’t blame them). I no longer feel safe with the idea of ever having to go the hospital (for anything)…a place that was once a beacon of care and safety is now a place to be feared (imo) and distrusted. I often feel like I’m living in an alternate universe as I simply don’t recognize this world anymore.

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Increasingly, I suspect that the whole point of the injections was to ensure “equality of outcome”, in the same way that communism ensures near-universal misery.

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I think you mean "equity of outcome." 😉

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I still can’t believe the sheer number of sheep in this country. I was foolish enough to think it would only be two weeks until day 15 and than I was beyond pissed off. I still don’t understand how more people aren’t pissed off by the great Scamdemic.

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I can't understand why more people aren't outraged at what they did to us.

I mean, like, really pissed off kind of outrage.

The schools, the loss of learning, the small businesses that shut down, the despair, the desperation, suicides, drug overdoses, increased use of alcohol...it was a systemic, and planned, destruction of society.

I won't forget what they did to us....especially the so-called "medical experts."

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And all the people who died alone denyed the presence of their loved ones. I too will never forget, nor forgive.

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...and the people in nursing homes who believed their families abandoned them because they were not allowed to visit.

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Yes, all being carefully forgotten about. How useful we have a new PM in the UK, mad energy prices and now the queen is dieing! So many distractions. Someone should point out her family wouldn't have been visiting her during imprisonment.

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IF she were a prole...the rules didn’t/don’t apply to the “ruling class”.

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I forgot the forced death shots.

Take the jab, or lose your job.

This is not the country I grew up in...never have seen such totalitarian behavior in the US before.

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In one of the outposts of Wokeville, New York where I live on stolen Indian land it is still going on.

A (very) amateur symphony with whom I last played in year ONE BC (Before Covidia) now requires proof of quackcinnation to participate. (Last season it was just a promise of vaccination and a mask). Despite the obvious fact that the shots prevent nothing and have proven to be dangerous and deadly. Despite the fact that the injection killed a member of the bass section about a year ago., despite the numerous flu-like illnesses breaking out...in the vaccinated. Despite the preponderance of elders in the group who are particularly vulnerable to quax side effects.

If one were to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, creed, color, sexual orientation, etc it would be shut down and rightly so. But this is OK because of...ya know, Science!

The so-called "arts community" is the worst on all this Scamdemic self-righteous tomfoolery.

These folks are worse than stupid they are virtue signalling moral criminals. They deserve the consequences.

It's breathtaking to witness the grip of fear this had and still has on a vast number of these people who will be damaged for life physically and psychologically. The shadow of this psychosis will follow them to their graves. This is particularly true among the "educated" classes who now have a warped sense of purpose since they trust the "experts" and consider themselves as such.

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Oh, the "arts." Such pompous asses. Always have been and always will. They will hang onto the poison IV drug shot requirement forever. Why? Because they are pompous asses. That's all. Pompous asses don't have common sense, they just have "look at me, look at me!" egoism. Right now the egoism is all about the death shots. They are not quirky or rebels as they pretend to be. They are ego-filled conformists to the nth degree.

Sigh. I consider myself an artist but I have always been a leper in the "arts community."

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and the bureaucrats, teachers, busdrivers, postal workers, election officials, supermarket assistents at the check-out counters, even relatives and pedantic, nosy neighbours pretending to be enititled to force medical decisions on us.

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Postal workers? What did they do? --- I rarely go to the post office, so I really don't know.

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relatives live abroad and we regularly send each other 'real' post or smallish packages (books). mask and vaxx pass nazi's made just trying to get to the counter at the post office an uphill battle. fortunately this seems to have ended (for now, I suppose). same thing, and more nazi's happened at a memorial service for a friend/neighbour (who had died of old age/natural causes) held at a church, where non-neighbourhood administrators received us at the doors, blocking the entrance of anyone without a vaxx pass. so much for tolerance and compassion! however, those restrictive tactics also strengthened our resilience.

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Gotcha! First and last time I was at the post office this year was April. No masks, no vaxx passes here at all (red state). Probably the next time I'll be there will be next April. --- The church people are the ones that I really don't understand. Do they think God or Jesus would want you kept separate because you MIGHT be sick? If so, what God do they worship? Does Jesus even come into play in their minds? I just don't get that at all.

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exactly. what happened to the idea that 'all are blessed who gather here'? so they went from religious congregation to Institution, with very little spirituality or compassion, but I don't understand why.

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my initial thought was that if it we indeed needed 'two weeks to flatten the curve', it would not make a difference for any healthy person like myself to not comply. logical thinking early on made me an unbeliever (and the black sheep of my family). oh well.... :-))

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That's exactly what I saying to my family and friends. The premise was protect hospitals. By a flat curve rather than a steep NY type curve. It’s such BS it’s almost laughable if it wasn't such a serious criminal event.

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I wanted the govt to do a shelter order in GA for no other reason than businesses could then draw on insurance. Thankfully we were the first state to end it but I was crazy pissed after 2 weeks especially since we knew then that 95% of people and 99% of working age were at essentially zero risk.

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Great story. Your instincts in Laurel were correct. It's not the Bronx. Culture matters. I lived and worked in New Orleans for almost 30 years. I spent a lot of that time traveling in Mississippi and was happy to have my east coast liberal bias thoroughly debunked most of the time. Of course there are economic problems and crime problems, but most towns have their antebellum charm and predominantly friendly residents. Of all races. As a matter of fact, I saw much more racial harmony in the deep south than I see in the enlightened east coast. In the Bronx, and Washington D.C., you should definitely not open the door. Especially if it's a bureaucrat knocking.

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True, Raf. I've been down South a lot. The North is way too self-congratulatory re: race relations. So many liberals I know would never stay at Ricky's or go to the hoods I've been to.

Or send their kids to urban public schools, as we did. It wasn't all positive but we did it anyway.

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That's because you are a good and decent human being who lives in harmony with his values and ideals. I wish you could have seen the Victorian grandeur of the Biloxi and Pass Christian Mississippi coasts before it was washed away in hurricane Katrina.

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We did vol work in Biloxi after Katrina. It was a mess.

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We're going to Biloxi next March (driving, per my previous post haha). Can't wait.

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I was at the waterfront on the 4th of July. The amount of pre-fireworks fireworks by the crowd itself was truly awesome, bordering on dangerous. It was downright exciting to see and hear. I'd love to experience that again.

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I think Mark can recommend some nice B&Bs to you.

(end snark)

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but them from the government are there to help, no...? ;-))

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Another wonderful piece of writing Mark. I always find something unexpected and resonating in your essays. I love this. In this one? It was your Air BnB review and that of your host: I think most of us would respond similarly. Both parties “behaved”acceptably and thus gave and received good reviews. Unlike Big Government, both parties knew that bad reviews have consequences........

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Thanks, Steve.

Yes, for $48 what can you expect?

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Big spender Mark. You remind me of my old man. 😀

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Hey, if I had paid subscriptions, I could've stayed above the bakery.

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Hahahahahahahaha hahahhahaha! Remember Charles, he’s a lawyer.......

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Truisms are true because they’re true. Nothing beats personal accountability. When “elected”government allows govt unions to remove govt employee accountability, well, voilà : we end up with a bunch of Faucis.

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Yes, sorta like liability immunity for big harma. No accountability, no penalty, no cost for injury or death from a product the crime syndicate orders people to take.

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We once went on a chartered dinner cruise of Lake Union and Lake Washington. The ship was decent-sized and since I walked past it nearly every day, I was sufficiently intrigued to buy two tix - it being a benefit for our neighborhood association anyway.

When cruise day came a week later, we walked over to board. To our surprise, the line was pretty damn long. But we eventually got aboard and found a precious few sq ft on the fantail out in the breeze and sunshine. It was otherwise shoulder to shoulder. (I’m a little claustrophobic but we were above deck.)

The criuse took us from Lake Union over to the far larger Lake Washington. Due to the crowded conditions we weren’t able to get to the bar below decks to order drinks, and they ran outta “dinner” (a precooked hotdog wrapped in foil with a fun size bag of chips.)

So dinner was disappointing, but still it was a boat ride and a chance to ogle Bill Gates’ estate from the water, plus the weather was bright.

Couple weeks later, the neighborhood association contacted us and offered a refund - I suppose people had complained. (We didn’t.)

After all, what do you expect for $20 per person in Seattle?

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What you did here with the door was masterful. Thanks for this.

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I love the analogy! Same, never bought the '15 days to slow the spread'. But I am self employed, and all of my projects, and therefore, my income was cancelled or postponed in April and May. So I did stay home a lot, just because I was not sure when I would have an income again. Hubby is commission sales, calls on retailers, so his income was cancelled too, although his company did pay a draw on commission, about half his normal income that they later decided did not have to be 'paid back'. Spent the time 2 ways: 1.finally moved my office from the basement to a former kid room, finished a backyard landscape project and did a lot of 'cleaning out'. 2. Digging into all of this - origin of the virus, the tests, those fear mongering 'models' saying a million deaths, and so on....Tried my damndest to wake up my friends and family to all of the holes in this data and sketchy narrative. A few listened. A lot cancelled me. Oh well. Got involved in a lot of conservative groups, and made new, and better friends. But trust in pharma, medicine, and any of the 3 letter bureaucrat agencies is a permanent casualty.

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What a wonderful story, reminiscent of vignettes in Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley".

As for the pox, what's left to be said. With all the evidence presented, to still believe in the jab or indeed, in anything the government tells us, is to be a child, or an imbecile.

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My absolute favorite book of ALL time. I hated to see it end. He called so many things.

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Today's el gato malo fits well your recurring theme.

You are one with the superpower. "it turns out that the ability to keep one’s head when all others around you are losing theirs is basically a superpower."

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/more-jersey-switching-original-antigenic?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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To me it was so obvious this was a scam.

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Whew@ Another great one Mark. There's something about your writing that just makes me relate! I pictured my hubby and me in that situation and I don't think we would have gotten out of the car and figured out something else, but you never know.

Hubby has not been a die-hard covidiot or anything, but intelligence is such a high value to him (even though he is extremely street smart), he cannot allow himself to believe that Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, etc could have people dispensing lies about masking, shots, etc. Thankfully, he's a wait and see type guy so that worked in his favor, so he never got the jab. I suspected foul play right from the beginning and I'm getting more and more vindicated. However, he still can't believe I'm never flying again until the truth comes out. Not taking my chance that a pilot won't have a stroke mid-flight. (Okay big enough airplane there is a co-pilot, so both at once would be unlikely). Good thing I like driving!

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Your hubby sounds a lot like mine! We both had covid in early 2020, tested positive for antibodies in Dec 2020. He was planning to get the shot when it came out, but by the time he (not in a high risk group) was eligible, he was at his doctor for his physical, and thank goodness, his doc told him if he had antibodies he did not need the shot. He is now awake to a lot of this but still calls me tinfoil hat from time to time.....

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I wanted to "heart" but it doesn't take. When I see nobody caring around me, even I think I'm tinfoil sometimes, but the facts are on our side so....

edited...and now I see the heart took...

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If it (❤) doesn't take at all, Refresh the page. It should show up then. 😊

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I am always happy when I see an essay from you waiting in my Inbox. I am genuinely refreshed when I’ve read such clear thinking and good writing. The scam infuriated me from the beginning and I felt I had no place to put my righteous anger. The Elected Ones were useless/evil/power-drunk. My church closed its doors. My friends drank the kool-aid and shunned me. Well, we who could THINK all experienced it: No need to rehash it here.

I did recently have an experience that I can’t get over. I went to FL to help a newly widowed friend. I had to get her late husband’s death certificate and, thus, saw what was recorded. He died at age 67 in May 2022 (J&J, no booster, for the curious) from a massive stroke. This was correctly noted as #1 under Cause of Death. Number Two was ‘Covid-19.’ A complete lie and I hope hell awaits ALL who were complicit in this satanic fraud. As for me, I remain a mostly-friendless, unmasked, unstabbed, carry-permitted, proud Southern semi-fascist!

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Thanks, Teresa.

That's an interesting and believable story. I always have said, and still think, that if Covid was so deadly, I wouldn't have to rely on the news to tell me. I know a lot of people and they all survived.

Except for one close friend whom I suspect died from the shots.

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I agree with Teresa, I look forward to all of Mark’s essays. He has the ability to put into words my exact thoughts. If I tried, it would be gobbly-gook. I can relate to your FL experience. My grandson’s great grandma (other side of family) passed in 2021. She was in her 90’s, fell in the bathroom, broke her hip and hit her head. Ambulance took her away in critical condition. She died within 24 hrs, and the ER had the audacity to put COVID-19 on the death certificate. Needless to say, an attorney was hired……

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Attorney. 👍

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Consider that certain powerful people did this to us to provide a smokescreen for the fact that the illegal gain of function research in Wuhan caused the whole thing in the first place.

I thought this essay was going to be an allegory for what you thought was a SETUP; that you would posit that the whole covid episode was a setup for some other nefarious goal. But I just cant accept that so far. Maybe that is true. But this whole things smacks of panic and incompetence.

The WHO has a document called

"non-pharmaceutical measures for the mitigation of pandemic flu"

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf

In this doc is a summary of the knowledge from the last 100 years.

Masks dont work

Lockdowns cause more harm

It is ONLY appropriate to quarantine sick people and close contacts of sick people.

Diagnostic testing is appropriate only if there is a clinical disease...

Its all there:

And yet the agencies threw this all out.

Maybe because the virus was engineered as a research project in secret? It might have been research aimed at doing good but there was an accident and then the projections estimated that millions would die and the people responsible went into panic cover up mode

Deb Birx was the face of this malfeasance.

SHe needs to be questioned with truth serum

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I'm naturally disinclined to believe in wild conspiracy theories because my late law partner was Conspiracy Theory Central. You name it - the wilder and more unlikely the theory, the more he held on to it and proclaimed it to others. (Which was super embarrassing to me, to be honest.)

Though Bob was in fact my closest friend, I often and openly questioned his sanity.

My now grown children used to love Uncle Bob's crazier notions about the extreme health dangers of drinking ice water, and Jimmy Buffett being the CIA Station Chief of the Bahamas - and if he were alive today, he would be touting the theory that viruses are a myth. Now, with the exception of those particular items, they will tell you that it's amazing how Bob was frequently prescient.

SO I'm naturally disinclined to believe that COVID is a worldwide conspiracy to depopulate the Earth.

On the other hand, it's clear that birthrates are dropping off a cliff in correlation to the pervasiveness of the populations' mRNA "vax", young and fit athletes are dying on the playing fields, the US intelligence agencies funded the development of COVID and the vaccine (though it's not yet clear which came first), the US Govt actively bribed and cajoled media entities to spread misinformation in favor of the jabs, deadly cancer has quite suddenly raced through the gen pop,, and there was never ever *any COVID threat whatsoever* to children whose parents are being bullied into vaccinating them.

Bob - level with me brother - are we about to find out that Queen Elizabeth actually *IS* a reptilian shape-shifter?

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This recent book by mattias desmet called the psychology of Totalitarianism is a re-hashing of Hannah Arendt origins of totalitarianism. And it really gets into this idea why and how people are asked to believe conspiracy theories.

There are in fact actual conspiracies that do occur all the time. For instance mini groups get together with members of the US Senate and the Congress and conspire to do things like fix prices and pass laws that will favor them economically in some clandestine way.

While it may satisfy some emotional need to ascribe everything to intentional conspiratorial malfeasance, the answer in a lot of the situation is much more banal.

Hannah Arendt explained when she called the “banality of evil”

People can be convinced that things they Are doing our moral incorrect when they’re really not and it may seem to an outside observer that these people are insane and that there is some conspiracy when really it’s just the net result of millions of very bad choices

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great comment! perhaps you should read some of David Icke's reporting, the dots he seems to connect are quite amazing and always inspiring (whether agree or not) - https://davidicke.com/2022/09/07/first-came-9-11-then-covid-19-whats-the-next-crisis-to-lockdown-the-nation/

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Yes thank you i will

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This plandemic was a trial run for what they plan to do in the future. Unfortunately for them we're wise to what they did . Now it's up to us to never let it happen again. Do not comply! Never again, never forget.

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No more (so-called) ‘emergency declarations’. It’s used as a tool to get folks fearful (and thus submissive), and as an excuse for all these atrocities. I’ll decide for myself if there is an ‘emergency’. I certainly can’t trust TPTB to do so honestly. We must ALL refuse to comply with all this ridiculous crap.

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You’re right — we have opened the door, and it can’t be shut again. Lockdowns, masks, faulty medical treatments, and government handouts now have a precedent. This means that we will keep seeing them crop up as “effective policy responses” to “emergencies”.

It’s perverse, but sometimes I wish for a doomsday scenario. Individuals can refuse to comply, but the bureaucracy marches on. It needs to be burned away, and I don’t see how that happens without some kind of massive disaster.

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I hear ya. Not so much wish for it, but wonder what would happen if.... It probably wouldn't change a thing. TPTB would be in their bunkers and still plot our demise. The rest of us might just be dead from the disaster and save them the trouble.`\_(•_•)_/`

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that was a nice piece.

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