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Welcome to the New (Brainwashed) Civilization
I had a disturbing conversation with a relative, a cousin who is an off-the-charts left-leaning liberal and much older than me. She lives out west. She’s my flesh and blood and I let it drop today that I, and others in our family and my husband’s family had not been vaccinated. My reasons are personal preference due to major food allergies and a very bad reaction to a flu shot in 2008.
She and her husband have been vaccinated and boosted out the tail. When I disclosed this, she had a meltdown. “OH! OH! Oh no!! Oh! NO! I never would have thought you were like that! I am sweating — I can’t talk — I have to end this conversation! Oh no! A super spreader — how could you not?!! We had no post-symptoms!
The reason I brought it up at all, gingerly, was because she has been double-vaxed and boosted all up, and has worn a mask since everywhere, but got Covid in May 2022. She had a rough time, she raspily said but recovered. So now, they’ve discovered she’s severely anemic since May! She’s had bloodwork and the outcome has not yet been determined. I’m waiting to hear.
My new neighbor from California was forced to be vaxed to keep her job, and three hours after first shot experienced sudden high blood pressure, a detached retina, and eye bleeding. Yet they are still prescribing the shots, and pushing them on children.
My sister had not been vaxed but tested via a (Chinese) drugstore home test that she’s positive. After three days of feeling ill and quarantining, she is on the mend — with homemade chicken soup and aspirin. All of our family members have been well. My conversation with my cousin today alarmed me. I would never disclose my political views. I got the feeling that would send her permanently over the edge. But I was shocked by her reaction today — given the fact that she has been fully vaxed and boosted, got Covid, and is now having further health issues.
She could not speak to me! She made it clear she’s never without a mask. I haven’t worn a mask in over a year. God bless her, but as a well-educated woman (a retired teacher), there was no room for discussion or opinion.
I’m still stunned that some of our families, friends, co-workers, and neighbors have turned into stiffly single-minded, intolerant, and fearful people. We’re edging up to midterm elections. This is one issue among many that I see red lines, hostilities, and anger where there should be open discussion, and above all, freedom to differ. At least in a democracy.
I also see many mental health issues evolving from these recent societal upheavals, where they were not so present in society and families before, to this degree, that I can recall.
What has happened to our world, and who did this to us? Not a questionable virus — this is much bigger. I was upset today, but I realize I cannot change someone dear to me or her way of thinking. I can keep the door open and pray for our world that it comes to its senses.
But what does our world look like going forward if this is the norm? Maybe in communist countries, but in free societies, this is not acceptable!
Published in General
As to the cousin of @frontseatcat , I have found throughout the Covid pandemic that initial impressions become quite fixed for many of us. When illnesses first started breaking out in early 2020, I noticed quite a gulf depending on whether a person’s first encounter with the disease was someone with a severe reaction (hospitalization or death), fixing in that person’s mind great fear due to the worst case scenario, or the person’s first encounter with the disease was how many people had the disease but had little or no reaction, fixing in that person’s mind the idea that the disease was relatively low risk for most people. Once one of those two impressions was fixed, it was hard to get the person to consider another way of looking at it.
Public health officials worked hard through 2020 to convince everyone that every one of us was a public health disaster spreading disease upon every person with whom we had contact, no matter how well we felt. They insisted we should assume we were always spreading Covid. But those officials insisted, if we all covered our faces we could stop the spread of the pestilence with no downsides. Public health officials then worked hard in 2021 to cement in the minds of many the idea that the mRNA Covid vaccine was the solution that would prevent the vaccinated person from getting or spreading the disease, was perfectly safe, and that anyone who did not get the vaccine was putting everyone’s health at risk. Front Seat Cat’s cousin presumably believed the public health officials, and has their assertions now firmly cemented in her mind. Even personal experience is not enough to dislodge the first-established concrete “facts.”
The personal isolation encouraged by those very public health officials enhanced the tendency of people to cement into their minds the first impressions they developed. Without full life interaction with different people, many heard only from sources that reinforced their first impressions, further setting those impressions into unmovable status. Now so many people have been wholly or relatively isolated for so long that they don’t know how to deal with real people because real people are complex and have a variety of inputs and views.
Public health and other government officials and purveyors of technology who pushed us into isolation and limited our full life contact with other people, and who maliciously insisted electronic communication is just as good as real life.
Get back into real life. He says on an electronic medium that relies entirely on written words. :-)
Yep. Fear of the “other” comes natural to humans, I think.
I’m done with the Wuhan coronavirus — whether or not the Wuhan coronavirus is done with me.
But as to your question “What has happened to our world,” a thought:
Conservatives (“the right”) generally see the Constitution as something to be respected and protected. In contrast, radicals (“the left”) often see it as an impediment to what they consider to be progress. As a result, when the popular culture generally reflects conservative values and positions, as it did until just a few decades ago, radicals can speak relatively freely under the protection of a Constitution which conservatives respect.
In contrast, when the culture generally reflects radical values and positions (and is, I would argue, paradoxically no longer reflective of the organic culture still prevalent in America), then conservatives do not enjoy the same social liberties enjoyed by radicals of the past. This is because radicals don’t in general feel the same respect for the Constitution, and so are less likely than were conservatives of old to grudgingly accept the liberties it guarantees all of us.
The answer is to fight them on every front, and force them to try to defend their censoriousness in the legal court and the true court of public opinion. Which brings us back to Judge Ho, and to Jay Bhattacharya, and to JK Rowling, and to all those who are willing to speak truth to the authoritarian goons of cancel culture and tell them to shove it.
Or perhaps it goes farther back into their personal history, to childhood, the way they were raised by their parents, maybe even some degree of genetic influence: whether they tend towards collectivist attitudes, or individualistic. That would push someone towards accepting the panicky stories even if they don’t personally know anyone who had a bad reaction. And someone who did know someone who was very ill or died, could understand that even knowing someone personally who died, doesn’t prove that it’s common.
I had this shock in 2012. Which is where my dark-pilled “of course, not surprised” stuff comes from.
I could see 2008, given circumstances. But after seeing socialism, domestic terrorism, and defeat in war, the American people wanted more.
Business is business.
I would trust Lysenko over Newsom. A Tesla, Mr. Newsom is certainly not.
Lying to people is bad. I mean seriously, didn’t Fauci’s Mom ever read to him the boy who cried wolf.
You just described one of my children whose attitude has caused a serious breach in the harmony of our family. Her siblings have cut it with her while I have a tendency to defend her in order to keep the family together as any mother would do. But–to say this rancor within the family hurts is putting it mildly, particularly as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, holidays we all spend together in loving fellowship.
We all know there is a good deal of disagreement over the vaccines out there among the citizenry, but this is the first time I’ve read about how it affects families. Thank you for writing this Front Seat Cat.
If your daughter is the type who would insist that she won’t come to Thanksgiving unless everyone is vaccinated/masked/etc, I would suggest you follow the Ann Landers/Dear Abby (whichever it was, I don’t remember) advice and say “we’ll miss you.”
Good point Phil~
Public health officials worked hard through 2020 to convince everyone that every one of us was a public health disaster spreading disease upon every person with whom we had contact, no matter how well we felt. They insisted we should assume we were always spreading Covid. Yes! This is absolutely true – and verifiable. It can also be allied to other things, like the narrative on climate change, race, gender etc. Convincing society that certain people are a problem is doing a great harm to our culture.
Even personal experience is not enough to dislodge the first-established concrete “facts.” The personal isolation encouraged by those very public health officials enhanced the tendency of people to cement into their minds the first impressions they developed. Without full life interaction with different people, many heard only from sources that reinforced their first impressions, further setting those impressions into unmovable status. Excellent observation Tabby! This is reinforcing the current standoff that family members and others are experiencing – it must be overcome. Brainwashing our citizens is scary and I see how it’s eroded a free-thinking society.
Did the people want more? In 2012, I think many people understood that Obama had played the public in the final days of the election cycle 2008. In Oct 2008, he proclaimed that he would not allow the Wall Street crowd force the Main Street crowd into paying for their risky CDS’ and outright gambling.
Then he got elected and before the month was out he appointed Tim Geithner, to head the US Treasury. Geithner had already figured out how to use fear to install Bailout policies that rewarded the Big Money Crowd and forced everyone else to endure a L-shaped recovery curve. He perfected that game in Japan in the 1990’s.
So there was no way that Obama was going to be replaced at the Dem convention in 2012. (If there had been, we would have seen Hillary enter the race.) Obama had given the One Big Money Party everything they wanted. 23 to 32 trillions of dollars of Bailout monies to the financial firms that caused the 2008 collapse. Also, Big Insurers loved ObamaCare – a legal enforcement code which made everyone in the USA buy into it or else face onerous penalties almost as expensive as ObamaCare itself was.
Mitt Romney was too similar to Obama as far as the banking class was concerned, so he got no traction from any Dems who were frustrated with O.
Ron Paul was a much better choice than Mitt was. But the Republican Upper Crust of RINO’s loved Mitt’s support of and membership in the One Big Money Party far too much to let Ron Paul win in the various caucuses. To say things were slanted against Ron Paul would be an understatement.
Many things turned in 2008……….and before