WORSE THAN THEY REMEMBER

During Columbus Day weekend, 1978, I backpacked for four days in New Hampshire’s White Mountains’ Presidential Range. The weather up there can be nasty.

During our trip’s second day, it was. My older brother, three of his friends and I trudged for hours through a cold, steady rain before ascending a long, steep, boulder-ed stream bed. We got soaked.

I thought to myself, “We drove seven hours each way to do this?”

When, late in the day, we got above the tree line we were exposed to the strongest winds I’ve ever experienced. The howling and sheer force were awesome. I thought to myself, “Maybe it was worth the trip.”

We took refuge in a lean-to (an open-faced log cabin) near the mountaintop. After changing into dry clothes and a short rest, we walked 100 yards beyond and slightly above the lean-to and found a diffident, flannel-shirted, brown-haired and bearded forest ranger sitting on small stool in his large teepee, listening to a battery-powered radio; cell phones and Wi-fi hadn’t been invented. He said he hadn’t been off the mountain in three months. Periodically, a helicopter dropped food and supplies to him. Though I like the woods, that much solitude seemed stark and challenging.

He had an anemometer. We asked the wind speed. He nonchalantly told us 65. He didn’t seem to want company, so we returned to the lean-to, cooked some freeze-dried food on our camp stove and ate it appreciatively. Hunger is the best sauce.

About an hour before dark, a sturdy, very wet Yellow Lab, carrying on his flanks, small, twin nylon backpacks, emerged from the thick, yet mobile fog to our left. A lone, vital, brown-haired and mustachioed, down-vested, mid-thirties backpacker with his face reddened by wind and rain appeared ten yards behind the canine. Man and dog stepped up into the shelter. The man exhaled, laid his pack down and removed his dog’s pack. He was quick to tell us that the dog carried only its own food.

The man and his dog had traveled a different route to the near summit than we had. They had spent much of the afternoon inching along a five-foot-wide rocky ridge, called a “knife-edge,” that dropped sharply for hundreds of feet on each side. A fall from this ridge would have been fatal. Every year, people are blown off such New Hampshire ridges to their deaths.

My brother, who’s walked that ridge, said to the man, “I know that route. That must have been a rough crossing.”

The man replied, “Nah, it wasn’t too bad.”

Then he methodically began providing details. He talked about the extreme wind-chill. He said that the cloud fog was often was so thick he could scarcely see in front of him. He described how the howling gusts drove a rain and snow mix into his face for much of the afternoon. He told about how he and the dog both sensed the narrowness of the trail and continually braced themselves to prevent being blown into the foggy abyss. They got down on all fours multiple times to keep from being hurled from the narrow path. He said that his dog had, during several of the windiest moments, shivering and paralyzed by fear, laid down and refused to move forward through the elements.

Labs are usually springy and rambunctious. But as his owner told his story, the dog laid with his chin on the floor, shell-shocked and exhausted by what he’d experienced.

After hearing himself finish the story, the man paused and said, “Well…I guess it was pretty bad.”

We all laughed.

—

The passage of time usually abbreviates and blurs memories of bad experiences. Abridging one’s memories is self-protective. If people clearly remembered how bad various experiences were, their ability to function would be sharply compromised. Some stuff I’ve seen or done has completely sucked. But when I allow myself to briefly recall these times, they feel merely unpleasant; a few, broad adjectives mentally summarize what happened.

In many ways, it’s best just to have a binary memory about such stuff—yeah, that was bad—with diminished specificity and intensity. It’s less visceral and less painful.

Some euphemize about bad experiences. They might even paint a bad experience with an outright false, rosy hue. For example, if you asked him today, the hiker we met in the lean-to might say:

“Man, the view from that ridge was beautiful!”

—

I often write about the permanent harm that the Covid response caused: the drug overdoses and other suicides, the broken relationships, the immediate and permanent impoverishment of billions of people, world-wide, via lockdown-driven recession and Covid-spending inflation, over a millions small businesses lost, vaxx injuries and deaths, students’ learning and social development losses, elections manipulated by bogus mail-in ballots cast during a phony emergency, and the consequences thereof, including unlimited, destabilizing immigration. These effects are unforgettable because they’re seen in daily life. Though many fail to see the linkage between Coronamania and these outcomes.

As time passes and the Covid lunacy fades further into the past, many exhibit poor recall of how bad the lockdowns, closures, masks and injection crusades were at the time. Five years removed from peak Coronamania, and because of their station in/stage of life, many have forgotten how surreal, alienating, adversarial, frustrating and disillusioning life was during 2020-21. Many now claim, as the New Hampshire ridge crosser initially did, that the lockdowns and closures weren’t that bad. Some even delusionally maintain that the dislocation was worth it because it saved millions of lives. Lies die hard.

—

Some, including Scamdemic-shrill politicians like Cuomo, now say that governments lacked lockdown enforcement authority and didn’t stop anyone from doing anything in 2020-21; any limits on activity and travel were falsely said to be self-imposed.

This revisionism extends the profoundly bad faith he and other governors and mayors showed in those two years. Politicians issued “Shelter in Place Orders,” not recommendations. Police chased, ticketed and handcuffed scofflaws. Additionally, across most of America, officials closed schools, parks, churches and other places where people gathered. Police tape was common. They took down basketball rims and poured sand into skate parks. There were no workarounds for those who wanted to use places that were locked or made unusable.

An AI search denies that the imperious lockdown theater happened. It characterizes the “social distancing” measures as “recommendations.”

AI is aggregated BS. I distinctly remember entering Home Depot and other stores in March 2020 that posted on their doors a numbered Emergency Order by New Jersey’s Governor that all store entrants must wear a mask. There were specific and stringent limits on who could attend memorial services. Public singing was banned. Etc. Neighbors called the cops if you disobeyed. People screamed at non-maskers in grocery stores.

US citizens would have been infinitely better off if federal and state governments had been shut down throughout 2020-21. There would have been no lockdowns or closures, no mask madness, no lying and panic-mongering government-sponsored “experts.” Trillions of dollars wouldn’t have printed to cover for the lockdowns’ effects or to fund or mandate the unneeded shots. Life would also have much better if broadcast and website news covered nothing but weather, sports and celebrity gossip during that time. Though there were no sports and most of the celebrities fearfully hunkered down in their compounds.

—

In Spring, 2020, tens of millions of mob-following Americans senselessly supported locking down healthy people for the first time in history. They told us it wasn’t so bad to stay home: we could try a new recipe, learn to play an instrument and Zoom-call grandma. They said it was “only for two weeks.”

I wasn’t swayed by the “be kind” and “follow the science” sloganeering. I already knew how to make plenty of meals I like. I already made time to play music. And my grandmas have been gone for decades. I thought and said, “How about fearful you do you and let rational me be me? How about I decide which acts of kindness I do and which I skip because these cause more harm than good?” If your mask protects you, why do I need one? If grandma is at-risk, she can stay home, as she usually does.

I doubted the government’s initial pledge that the Shelter in Place Orders would end in two weeks. Thereafter, I doubted the pledge to reopen when we reached some arbitrary case count that, given the PCR tests extreme sensitivity, was intentionally unattainable. “Flattening the Curve” was a crass bait-and-switch that the vast majority of Americans swallowed, hook, line and sinker. To them, such precise numerical goals sounded like Science.

—

Those as withdrawn as the teepee-dwelling lonely ranger, or who were couch potatoes before the Scamdemic, didn’t mind the enforced or de facto isolation caused by the lockdowns and year-long closures of many places and the 18-month closure of schools and colleges. They got free money for little or no work and avoided commutes and annoying co-workers or in-laws. They binge-watched Netflix, painted bedrooms and cleaned closets or lived in a chemically-induced haze. Some lived in vacation houses.

The lockdowns/closures also worked for those who already had a spouse or a mate and a job that didn’t go away and/or for which they continued to be paid. Many got enhanced unemployment. Corporations got hundreds of billions in PPP and other largesse. These self-perceived, “all in this together” laptoppers ignored the profound harm the lockdowns and closures were causing to others.

In the meanwhile, the lockdowns and closures wrecked the lives of those who were in their twenties and looking for a job and/or a companion. Many were jobless for more than a year, and yet, were ineligible for 2020-21 handouts. Once they found a job, they began to service the federal debt for the trillions in giveaways and paid much more for everything because trillions more inflationary dollars were created by fiat. They’ll pay this debt for the rest of their lives. So will I, but at least I was able to buy a modest house.

The twenties have been called The Defining Decade. This age cohort found themselves unemployed and isolated at ages when their predecessors were working and saving, meeting mates or having adventures. Political and economic opportunists stole essential parts of young peoples’ youth. The 2020-21 twenty-somethings will never get back the time, experiences and money they lost. I remember a Boomer MD telling me the lockdowns and closures were good for younger people because these would “build character.” I disagreed strongly and at some length.

As they had the most to lose, the young should have protested the lockdowns and closures from Day 1. But because they’d been indoctrinated to go along with the crowd and pursue a narrowly-defined form of “social justice,” Generations Y and Z lacked the ability to think independently and to perceive that they were the most victimized group in America at that time. Instead of buying the hype and simple-mindedly focusing on grandma, they should have taken a broader view and seen that the lockdowns involved massive transfers of wealth to the already wealthy and that the poorest of the poor went hungry when the world economy was put on ice.

—

2020 was overtly bad in the ways stated above. But as in many other instances, what didn’t happen was as bad as what did happen.

When my normal social options were cut off during the lockdowns and closures, I tried and failed to organize protest. My lack of social media savvy limited my effectiveness. But organizing protest seemed futile. Most people supported the lockdowns. Some found these exciting. “Stopping the spread” by doing nothing added purpose to purpose-deficient lives. Some were happy to do less work. A few wondered how they could protest when the government had decreed Shelter in Place Orders.

I worked a 25-hour week, outdoors, face-to-face with other people. Deprived of normal leisure time options, I did part-time, what many others did full-time: I fixed broken things in my house, played more music and took many walks to nowhere. In bad weather, I went to Walmart for the first times and walked up and down the aisles, without a mask. The people and the setting were gloomy. But they displayed colorful food and other merchandise.

—

For months in my early twenties, I worked on an assembly line. It was better than being unemployed and broke. But the intensity of assembly line boredom is hard to express. Boredom is a terrible state of mind and being. It’s easy to remember disliking it, but memory lessens the magnitude of the pain.

The lockdowns and closures resembled that assembly plant line time. Neither was as bad as being subjected to violence, hunger or sleep deprivation. But being forced to do nothing when you’re itching to do something is awful. What stories can capture and what words can describe the nothingness of the lockdowns and closures? Hell is a place where nothing ever happens.

Though I live in a busy part of the world that normally has many places worth going to, because these were closed or locked, I felt like there was no place to go. It was like being stranded at sea, thirsty but surrounded by undrinkable water.

Most people disregard the many, deep, lasting psychological losses from the irreplaceable experiences that didn’t happen during peak Coronamania, including the inability, as pictured above, to visit and lay hands on those who lived in isolation or to be with a loved one when they died. How many people died or grieved alone? Why is a nursing home visitor wearing a mask outside a window? How many friendships weren’t made, how many places weren’t seen and how many babies weren’t born?

—

In addition to the limitations on activities, it angered me that so many Coronamanic people proudly, self-virtuously exhibited so much needless fear and baselessly claimed so much biological knowledge and authority. I hated the ubiquitous face-coverings, the dorky elbow bumping, the “STAY HOME” yard signs, the one-way store aisles, the temperature taking and hand-sanitizing at store entrances, the iPhone menus, and later, the outdoor backyard movie nights and the mask-up/mask-down charade.

As I waited for my neighbors and friends to see the Scam, I lost more faith in humanity each day. I had never seen such mass-scale delusion and poor judgment. It was painful to realize that so many people I liked were so fearful, gullible, selfish and opportunistic.

People intentionally forget, or suppress, conduct or actions that show them in a bad light. Those who gullibly got swept up in Coronamania and, during that time, stridently supported did and said stupid and terrible things to lockdown, closure, and mask opponents now act like these oppressive measures didn’t happen. To the extent they allow themselves to reflect, the Coronamanic absurdly tell themselves they saved lives or that “they did the best they could” with the information they had at the time. These same people now say “Covid’s over. Stop talking about it.”

They won’t admit that they failed to see the Scam. They’ve granted themselves amnesty simply because they think enough time has passed since 2020. But the passage of time doesn’t nullify bad memories or mend relationships.

—

The Covid response was tremendously, foolishly, opportunistically and extremely, painfully disruptive throughout 2020 and 2021. I won’t tolerate those who deny reality and now say it was no big deal. Preserving an accurate memory of this period is why I’ve printed two books compiling story/essays chronicling Coronamania and explaining why the none of the Covid response ever made sense.

I’d like it if you’d share, in the Comments, your most nightmarish stories about the lockdown, closures and masks. It’s the kind of horror movie that holds my attention. If haven’t deleted the 2020-22 emails or texts that most angered you, please share these, too.

Next week, for those whose 2021-22 memories may have faded, I’ll remind readers how bad the shot mania was.