A reckoning is required but it will not happen. People just can’t seem to say they are sorry or willing to look themselves in the mirror and see the dark tendencies of “othering” people. I can forgive making mistakes, but feeling entitled to dehumanize others for your own well being is a tough sell. The only positive I take away is like the atrocities of Hamas, people’s masks are off and I know exactly who I am dealing with.
I feel like I've read this before? Still completely relevant, though. I don't remember where I read it now, but somebody said that the first step in covid amnesty shouldn't be for the people who got everything wrong, it should be for the people who got everything right.
Not to mention, as I was reading her article, she has thrown in some little digs. She talks about how the people who were right were accidentally right and this, only because of their politics presumably. The whole bleach narrative is brought up every time any of them try to offer any type of forgiveness. No one with brains thought President Trump literally meant to inject bleach. He was obviously saying bleach kills germs, wouldn't it be nice if we could come up with something like that (kills germs) we could just inject? It's dishonest and they know it. You want amnesty while still spewing lies, blaming others, and low-key name calling? No. No. No.
"Those with a fetishistic relationship with safety would have you believe that they’re noble, virtuous people who care about others just as much as themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Safetyism is an existence premised upon fanatical self-regard. In the context of the pandemic, it manifested as a submission to fear by those so scared of dying that they were afraid to live."
Great writing!
But Covidmania will get swept under the rug much in the same way as the Iraq debacle did. When the MSM and almost the entire political class embark on a joint crusade it means that responsibility will be deferred infinitely. The herd huddles together for safety, in this case for protection from being revealed as the opposite of the best and the brightest—it's the whole point of joining the herd in the first place!
Recently, I claimed that someone was evil and I was called out for it. That led me to think about the definition of evil... at least what I consider it to be.
My definition of "evil" are people that actively participate in actions that knowingly harm others for their personal gain or enjoyment. This definition is amplified when the actor lies to claim that their actions are caring.
Related to this, I was talking to my wife about my own epiphany that I am not accepting of my Democrat friends, who have supported so many destructive policies just because they hate Trump, as they shift in opposition to the regime they put in power over their hate of Trump. I don't know if it is good or not that I am not accepting. I want my pound of flesh. In my heart it feels wrong of me, but somewhere in my competitive dinosaur brain of survival instinct, I am feeling some tug of recognition that acceptance and forgiveness isn't the right thing to do either.
So I concluded that it the truly evil people that need to pay the price. Those that have passively participated because the evil people ran the media and education system propaganda project and convinced them to take the wrong and harmful position... I think those people get a pass. We should welcome that they finally figured it out... woke from the fog from being assimilated into the collective.
I have a list of those evil people. Many of them are Education Union leaders... Randi Weingarten at the top. There are several state governors. Anthony Fauci and several other heads of the CDC and NHI.
And there are more rank and file people with authority and influence that have also earned the label of evil in the COVID-era behavior... because THEY REALLY DID KNOW BETTER BUT THEY DID IT FOR THEIR OWN PERSON GAIN OR ENJOYMENT!
I don't think the passive clones of COVID fear need to face retribution. Certainly they need to be reminded that they effed up so they are more alert to their own fallibility next time.
May those who committed crimes be held accountable before the law. It's a long list: fraud, malice aforethought, murder, violation of citizens' rights... I'm not expecting Kumbaya World, but I do believe that we will see some individuals held to account; there are too many lawsuits in the works already, and the lawyers and plaintiffs are getting savvier. Also, slowly but surely, state and national legislators are starting to speak out, and those lawmakers who are still conned or simply wusses, are feeling the heat from their constituents-- so very many people are extremely angry about the jab deaths and injuries, and slowly but surely they're getting organized and they know where to point the pitchforks. I often point to the work of Texans for Vaccine Choice. They're not the only health freedom organization out there, but they have had some successes, and keep a close tab on individual state legislators for their stances on medical freedom. https://texansforvaccinechoice.com/elections/
I hope that many more organizations in other states will emulate them in this (and I have no doubt that some I am unaware of have already).
I would also add that people such as myself are not going to ever accept that this scorpion's nest of covidian policies was in anyway something to forget. I'm probably typical of many people who come here to your Substack in that I know in my bones how wrong this all was to have violated peoples' rights like this, I know it needs to rectified-- to the degree possible-- and even if all the people around me play Emily Ostrich and delare it's over, let's make nicey-nice, no, for me, it's not over, and it won't be over, not for many years. I know very well that if we act like it didn't happen because that's the easier, more socially comfortable path, such outrages will only be more likely happen again, and that is totally, thoroughly, completely, and resoundingly unacceptable.
Your idea of an equivalent of Mandela’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission is interesting. It provides a possible way forward. But it needs to be paired with the admission of guilt with legal binding so that the victims of these persecutions & their surviving families can bring about civil trial for restitution with a start that the confessing persons or institutions are guilty & the trial will be only to decide on restitution. The other option would be for criminal persecution of anyone refusing this commission’s jurisdiction. But if their actions did in fact result in injury, then criminal proceedings must take precedence over reconciliation.
No amnesty. They ruined a President, a Country, and the World. They killed people by telling them that simple drugs (HCQ and Ivermectin) were bad and wouldn’t help, and they didn’t care. They threatened doctors and took licenses. They ruined and destroyed businesses. This was as bad as Mao or Stalin. Payment must be made.
Unsaid about Mandela's Truth and Reconciliation commission is that those who testified seeking forgiveness had the fear of God put into them by the victors of that political struggle. They didn't just do it because they had an epiphany and decided that they had been previously wrong.
As it turns out that that fear was well founded, given that Mandela's successors now openly chant "kill the Boer."
Does Emily actually *apologize* in her article? Does she say "I was wrong"? I doubt it. (Not that I'm going to read any bilge that's printed in the Atlantic, ever since they called the Tea Party "teabaggers" - in print!)
No Pandemic Amnesty
No amnesty until they understand they need to apologize. But more importantly what they should apologize for:
1. Issuing the equivalent of death sentences to their fellow-citizens by excluding them from society. In other words, a sentence of DESPAIR.
2. They took my fucking freedoms. I will never forget that. Next time I will shed blood.
3. They did not give a shit that my business is the way I feed my family. We are not non-essential. How fucking dare they.
Do you guys think they know what they should really be seeking amnesty for?
Why is this small group of elite not hanging from lampposts. Are Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Obama really that important to the future of society?
This is going around twitter now? I thought Oster's article came out months ago. Did something happen to get people talking about it again?
Anyway, great article and I totally agree -- No Amnesty.
A reckoning is required but it will not happen. People just can’t seem to say they are sorry or willing to look themselves in the mirror and see the dark tendencies of “othering” people. I can forgive making mistakes, but feeling entitled to dehumanize others for your own well being is a tough sell. The only positive I take away is like the atrocities of Hamas, people’s masks are off and I know exactly who I am dealing with.
I feel like I've read this before? Still completely relevant, though. I don't remember where I read it now, but somebody said that the first step in covid amnesty shouldn't be for the people who got everything wrong, it should be for the people who got everything right.
It's a good point.
Not to mention, as I was reading her article, she has thrown in some little digs. She talks about how the people who were right were accidentally right and this, only because of their politics presumably. The whole bleach narrative is brought up every time any of them try to offer any type of forgiveness. No one with brains thought President Trump literally meant to inject bleach. He was obviously saying bleach kills germs, wouldn't it be nice if we could come up with something like that (kills germs) we could just inject? It's dishonest and they know it. You want amnesty while still spewing lies, blaming others, and low-key name calling? No. No. No.
"Those with a fetishistic relationship with safety would have you believe that they’re noble, virtuous people who care about others just as much as themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Safetyism is an existence premised upon fanatical self-regard. In the context of the pandemic, it manifested as a submission to fear by those so scared of dying that they were afraid to live."
Great writing!
But Covidmania will get swept under the rug much in the same way as the Iraq debacle did. When the MSM and almost the entire political class embark on a joint crusade it means that responsibility will be deferred infinitely. The herd huddles together for safety, in this case for protection from being revealed as the opposite of the best and the brightest—it's the whole point of joining the herd in the first place!
Recently, I claimed that someone was evil and I was called out for it. That led me to think about the definition of evil... at least what I consider it to be.
My definition of "evil" are people that actively participate in actions that knowingly harm others for their personal gain or enjoyment. This definition is amplified when the actor lies to claim that their actions are caring.
Related to this, I was talking to my wife about my own epiphany that I am not accepting of my Democrat friends, who have supported so many destructive policies just because they hate Trump, as they shift in opposition to the regime they put in power over their hate of Trump. I don't know if it is good or not that I am not accepting. I want my pound of flesh. In my heart it feels wrong of me, but somewhere in my competitive dinosaur brain of survival instinct, I am feeling some tug of recognition that acceptance and forgiveness isn't the right thing to do either.
So I concluded that it the truly evil people that need to pay the price. Those that have passively participated because the evil people ran the media and education system propaganda project and convinced them to take the wrong and harmful position... I think those people get a pass. We should welcome that they finally figured it out... woke from the fog from being assimilated into the collective.
I have a list of those evil people. Many of them are Education Union leaders... Randi Weingarten at the top. There are several state governors. Anthony Fauci and several other heads of the CDC and NHI.
And there are more rank and file people with authority and influence that have also earned the label of evil in the COVID-era behavior... because THEY REALLY DID KNOW BETTER BUT THEY DID IT FOR THEIR OWN PERSON GAIN OR ENJOYMENT!
I don't think the passive clones of COVID fear need to face retribution. Certainly they need to be reminded that they effed up so they are more alert to their own fallibility next time.
Thanks for this.
May those who committed crimes be held accountable before the law. It's a long list: fraud, malice aforethought, murder, violation of citizens' rights... I'm not expecting Kumbaya World, but I do believe that we will see some individuals held to account; there are too many lawsuits in the works already, and the lawyers and plaintiffs are getting savvier. Also, slowly but surely, state and national legislators are starting to speak out, and those lawmakers who are still conned or simply wusses, are feeling the heat from their constituents-- so very many people are extremely angry about the jab deaths and injuries, and slowly but surely they're getting organized and they know where to point the pitchforks. I often point to the work of Texans for Vaccine Choice. They're not the only health freedom organization out there, but they have had some successes, and keep a close tab on individual state legislators for their stances on medical freedom. https://texansforvaccinechoice.com/elections/
I hope that many more organizations in other states will emulate them in this (and I have no doubt that some I am unaware of have already).
I would also add that people such as myself are not going to ever accept that this scorpion's nest of covidian policies was in anyway something to forget. I'm probably typical of many people who come here to your Substack in that I know in my bones how wrong this all was to have violated peoples' rights like this, I know it needs to rectified-- to the degree possible-- and even if all the people around me play Emily Ostrich and delare it's over, let's make nicey-nice, no, for me, it's not over, and it won't be over, not for many years. I know very well that if we act like it didn't happen because that's the easier, more socially comfortable path, such outrages will only be more likely happen again, and that is totally, thoroughly, completely, and resoundingly unacceptable.
Your idea of an equivalent of Mandela’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission is interesting. It provides a possible way forward. But it needs to be paired with the admission of guilt with legal binding so that the victims of these persecutions & their surviving families can bring about civil trial for restitution with a start that the confessing persons or institutions are guilty & the trial will be only to decide on restitution. The other option would be for criminal persecution of anyone refusing this commission’s jurisdiction. But if their actions did in fact result in injury, then criminal proceedings must take precedence over reconciliation.
The Atlantic article doesn't even admit the vaccines were a mistake.
No amnesty. They ruined a President, a Country, and the World. They killed people by telling them that simple drugs (HCQ and Ivermectin) were bad and wouldn’t help, and they didn’t care. They threatened doctors and took licenses. They ruined and destroyed businesses. This was as bad as Mao or Stalin. Payment must be made.
Wish I wrote this. Wish I COULD write this. Glad you wrote this!
I was lucky. The worst consequences I suffered were being thrown off of multiple internet fora. I'm finding Substackland much more enjoyable.
Unsaid about Mandela's Truth and Reconciliation commission is that those who testified seeking forgiveness had the fear of God put into them by the victors of that political struggle. They didn't just do it because they had an epiphany and decided that they had been previously wrong.
As it turns out that that fear was well founded, given that Mandela's successors now openly chant "kill the Boer."
Does Emily actually *apologize* in her article? Does she say "I was wrong"? I doubt it. (Not that I'm going to read any bilge that's printed in the Atlantic, ever since they called the Tea Party "teabaggers" - in print!)