THE WAY THEY WERE

It’s hard to score goals in professional ice hockey. In a typical season, only thirty of 700 NHL players score more than thirty goals and only three players score over fifty.

About twenty years ago, I read of a defenseman who had just hung up his skates. Though he played effectively for a decade, this player never scored more than five goals in a season. On the day he announced his retirement, a reporter asked the now-ex-player how he’d like to be remembered. He smiled mischievously and said, “As a fifty-goal scorer.”

Often, how something is remembered differs sharply from how it actually was. And often, those who characterize their own conduct engage in revisionism.

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In July 2016, I attended my 40th high school reunion. I enjoyed it immensely. I danced enthusiastically and at some length—no, I wasn’t drinking—with various women who, when I was 18, would have seemed much too old for me. At one point, I came off the floor on that hot night soaked with sweat. A former baseball and basketball teammate came up to me, put his hand on my shoulder, smiled and said, “Be careful. You’re not as young as you used to be!”

We both laughed hard. I knew he was right. And I probably shouldn’t have done those splits.

Four hours earlier, when I had arrived at the reunion’s check-in the table, one of my 430 classmates, Maura Dolan, looked up from her attendee list, smiled and exclaimed, “Mark Oshinskie, you were such a pisser in high school!”

Back in the day, a “pisser” was a wisecracker/jokester. My heart was lighter then. Life was simpler and less alienating. Phone-free people spent more time face-to-face.

Some have observed that people don’t remember what you did or said, but they do remember how you made them feel. Over time, people experience and see a lot and must select and compress what they remember. Thus, memories tend to be simple and binary. In four years, I might have been in one class with Maura. Maybe I said or did some funny stuff there; I don’t remember. But when I showed up at the reunion, Maura asked herself: did I like Mark, or not? She had mnemonically filed me as a pisser. Knowing this made me feel good and like her in return.

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A few weeks ago, I flew back to New Jersey from Minnesota. When I wiggled into my window seat, I was wearing my anti-Coronamania t-shirt. The 26-year-old guy to my right told me that he had seen my shirt in the waiting area and liked it. I told him I had written a book about the Scamdemic and that I posted on the Net nearly each week about this topic since it began.

We talked the whole rest of the flight, asking each other many questions about a wide range of topics. Among these, he asked me what I sought to accomplish by continuing to write about the past four and a half years.

I told him that, as noted above, how an experience is remembered is important. During four-plus years of phony, alarmist Covid narrative, increasing numbers of people have gradually, belatedly figured out that the whole thing was a strategic, extreme, and extremely damaging overreaction based on a series of lies.

Some still haven’t perceived these lies. Others know they’ve been lied to but won’t admit that they were slow to figure this out. Many who bought or sold the overreaction lamely maintain that “We couldn’t have known” that this virus wasn’t so bad or that all of the disruption was “worth it, because it saved millions of lives.”

The media and government are doing their damnedest to preserve these foundational myths. Doing so assuages their audiences’ consciences and soothes their egos, which have deservedly taken big hits following their naive support of the absurd lockdowns, school closures, masking, testing-and-tracing and the epically failed shots. Perpetuating the disinformation that animated Coronamania also shields them from accountability for the destruction they’ve caused.

I write largely to dispel these lies. I want people to accurately remember what happened.

Some say that awakening people to the scam is important because it will prevent an overreaction to “the next Pandemic.” I’m not looking that far ahead. It’s important to tell the truth now, for its own sake. Of the few people who have engaged with me on this topic, most have relied on bogus “facts” that are easily debunked. If people predicate their views on these falsehoods, their memories will be faulty.

Napoleon said, “History is a series of lies, agreed upon.”

I’ll continue to bear witness to the Covid myths and illogic. The more people who do the same, the better. The Scamdemic’s implementers and those they conned want you to act as if the Scamdemic never happened.

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I also write to link plainly visible, residual dysfunction to its Scamdemic origins. I want to remind people why social life has attenuated, why Americans are more divided than ever, why young people are academically, socially and psychologically damaged, why stuff costs so much, why there are fewer houses for sale and fewer jobs, why birth rates are declining and why people don’t trust the media, doctors, the government or mail-in election results, et al.

I stay on task by posting on Substack and by wearing my t-shirt in crowds. My book also tangibly, indelibly chronicles how disingenuous and destructive the mitigation has been. Censors can delete my internet posts; many of these were 404-ed in 2021. But there are hard copies of my book in my house and in many houses in many states.

In addition to writing and wearing a shirt, I still bring up the Scamdemic during direct encounters. This makes people uncomfortable and testy.

Good. Creating discomfort has value. How many times have you heard people say, in other contexts, that it’s virtuous to “afflict the comfortable?” By continuing to mention Coronamania, I’m afflicting those who were comfortable during that time, when billions lost age-limited life experiences, jobs and businesses, the ability to gather for weddings and funerals, killed themselves or died other deaths of despair.

The Covid overreaction deserves enduring focus. Many have proclaimed that people should “never forget” other dark chapters of human history. If the public isn’t continually reminded of what governments and the media have done since March 2020, these institutions will continue to shift public focus to the next, shiny object, media-designated crises here or abroad: foreign wars, monkeypox, J Lo, trans boxers, et al, ad infinitum.

I’m not so distractible.

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Do events become unmentionable because “enough” time has passed? Scanning Barnes & Noble’s shelves this week, I saw many books discussing events from, or individuals who were relevant, 100, 50, 10 and 5 years ago. B & N still considers books about the Tulsa Riots of 1921, the organized labor movement, World War II, African colonialism, Vietnam, Northern Ireland’s Troubles and hundreds of other decades-old happenings consequential enough to sell; presumably, people buy and read these. How many lockdown and vaxx advocates say books about Lincoln, FDR, Oppenheimer, the Kennedys, LBJ, MLK, Nixon, Mandela, Warhol, Basquiat or Sontag—also prominently displayed—are irrelevant because these figures are long since dead?

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Ultimately, those of us speaking and writing against the Scam are in an arms race and a war of attrition against the Mania mongers. The Scamdemic liars will continue to sell their phony narrative. They’ve accrued much money, political gain and social control by doing so. Why stop now, when they can consolidate and attempt to legitimize their il-gotten gains?

The liars also have, as they have since March, 2020, infinitely more resources and access to mass audiences than do those identifying the lies. Expect more slow, mournful solo-piano-soundtracked PBS shows and documentary films about how the magically worst, most aberrant virus in history killed millions; as if the statistics were accurate and as if multitudes haven’t died throughout history at ages far lower than the ostensible Covid death average of 80 years. Expect Pharma and governments to fund somber granite memorials, including fountains filled with crocodile tears for all the superannuated Covid victims. Expect many more histrionic news accounts about the latest viral “surge.” And more ads promoting the latest booster.

Remember when they said, “Two shots and this is all over,” “Two weeks to flatten the curve,” “Stop the spread,” “We’re all in the together,” “My mask protects you,” “If it only saves one life, it’s all worth it,” and “Kids are resilient.”

What's too painful to remember, they simply choose to forget.

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Above all, I write, as I have since March, 2020, to affirm and accompany the sensible, perceptive people who saw the Scam and who understandably felt that much of the populace had lost their minds. It’s been exasperating to be surrounded by lunacy. That memory hasn’t gone away. It never will.

Reciprocally, getting messages from, and speaking to, many readers and other anti-Scam writers has lifted my spirits.

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My well-spoken flightmate in seat 24B said that many of his peers now see that they've been repeatedly lied to during the past four-plus years. Accordingly, they’ve reshaped their worldviews, especially their perception of government, the media and experts, whom they now see as deeply dishonest, manipulative and corrupt. He said this shift made him optimistic. I’m pleased to be among those writers and in-person discussants who reinforce such appropriate—albeit belated—skepticism, distrust and revulsion.

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In a failed attempt to silence me, some wish to silence me by insincerely and patronizingly saying they feel sorry for me because I’m “unable to move on.”

Nice try.

No one needs to worry about my mental health. Prior to the Scamdemic, some of these same people told me that I was the “most grounded” or “sanest” person they knew and that they “loved” me for this. I haven’t lost my sanity; it enabled me to see the Scam when most of my peers lost their heads. Doing so made me less lovable.

If the Coronamanic pitiers need an object/target for their emotion, they can turn their search inward and feel guilty about the profound harm they caused by buying an obvious overreaction and aggressively supporting the bizarre “mitigation” and injection crusades. After that, they can feel sorry for those who don’t have enough to eat, can’t walk or lack human connection, or those injured or killed by the shots, et al.

I compartmentalize well. Though I remain focused on Coronamania, I read about and do plenty of other stuff. No one who knows me well or with whom I play basketball would describe me as depressed, even now; sometimes angry, but calmly and appropriately so. Unlike tens of millions of Americans, I don’t eat my emotions or need antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, alcohol or weed to cope. I can still laugh, play sports, play music and dance.

Without the splits, though.