We Are Not QR Codes
I sporadically wrote this post over the course of October. It started as three distinctly different drafts but I decided it could all work as one overall point. Let's reclaim our humanity.
A few weeks ago, I published Play Clown Games, Win Clown Prizes. I obviously don’t like that Ben Bernanke is treated as a hero and I don’t believe simply flooding the economy with counterfeit money is deserving of a Nobel prize for economic sciences. Anybody can just say “I guess we should print money.” Like literally, a 5 year old could come up with that strategy. But I do think that laughing at some of the insanity is therapeutic. That’s why I shared the Bernanke-themed “Every Breath You Take” parody in that post.
Funny backstory about that video. When I watched it for the first time as I was preparing that post, I started cracking up on the couch. My daughter, who turns five in about a week, came over to ask what was so funny. I talk to my daughter like she’s an adult a lot; it’s just intuitive to me and I don’t want to baby my kid. So I told her I was laughing at a parody video. I actually used the word parody. Of course, she asked what it means. This led to explaining what imitation is and what doing imitation specifically to be funny is. To help hammer the point home, I asked her if she remembered the Weird Al video that my wife and I showed her about a year ago. She didn’t.
This led to showing her both Michael Jackson’s video for “Beat It” and Weird Al’s video for “Eat It.” It’s hilarious. She thought it was funny and we moved on. More importantly, I think she knows what parody is now (Narrator: she did not). But I’m actually telling this story because of something that happened the next day. She came down from bed about 30 minutes earlier than normal. Climbed into our bed and said, “Dad, I want to watch the Monorail Jackson video.”
What are you talking about?
After some questioning, I figured out that she meant Michael Jackson. She wanted to watch “Beat It” again. These are the small little things that happen in life that make life so worth living. Monorail Jackson. It might stick if she thinks its funny, it might not. But my wife and I can always laugh about it because it’s adorable.
Reclaim Humanity
The little moments when your kids are growing and learning are priceless. They’re great reminders of why we’re all here; to have a human experience. We are not numbers, QR codes, or avatars; we are people and it’s time we started treating ourselves and each other as such. When we do this, we will have a renaissance in community and the human experience.
Some people are made to be parents. Others aren’t. Knowing who you are and what you want out of your time on this rock is what is important. Owning it is equally important. You don’t have to be a parent to have meaningful human interaction either. Don’t let people shame you for the choices you’ve made even when those choices may have appeared selfish to others. Likewise, don’t let those who don’t know what is personally best for you coerce you into doing something that could negatively impact your ability to find those happy life moments.
I saw a headline earlier this month that made me really sad:
Really? Are we sure about that? I think I need two hands to count how many women I know personally who experienced cycle issues immediately following the jab. Of course, mAyBe all the complications were from the disease not the treatment.
But I’d wager at least some of the complications were from the mRNA inoculations that most of the population just received. Of course, it’s also entirely possible the complications were from depression and/or the stress of lockdowns. If we had honest government, honest corporations, and honest media, we’d probably be getting to the bottom of it. Of course, each of the entities just mentioned has culpability in what just happened to the people of earth and I believe Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak and friends have reinforced that when you’re a witness in the investigation that you’re conducting you’re probably not going to produce an outcome that goes against your interests.
The Demolition of Legacy Media is Imminent
When a publicly traded company in a completely unrelated field has a Pfizer executive on its Board of Directors, is it a good look for that company to mandate it’s employees receive a product that Pfizer provides as a prerequisite for keeping employment? If that company is also in the business of journalism and claims to “verify” facts for the public, should that company be investigating the claims a company like Pfizer makes or should it be essentially copy/pasting Pfizer’s PR copy in fictional stories that are presented as factual news? If that company chooses money and politics over people and has a large megaphone pointed at the public, has informed consent actually taken place?
When the fox is guarding the hen house, the hens may have to find a different house. Given how the corporate media is currently constructed, it is beyond time to turn to other places for answers. Luckily, there are other places trying to find answers. Have you heard of the documentary Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion? I’d embed the entire piece but YouTube took it down last night. Here’s the trailer:
Fortunately, Rumble exists and you can freely watch it there if you don’t want Google deciding what you can and can’t handle digesting. This documentary is about an hour. It’s not a low-budget Bitchute-type video. The production value is great. The presentation is polished. This is the human side of COVID jabs that many people still aren’t seeing. It might actually appeal to people who still believe what we just went through with the inoculation program was a responsible public health initiative and not a public/private partnership propaganda campaign.
While the most emotional stuff from a humanity perspective is from listening to the testimonies of those who are vaccine injured throughout the first 30 minutes or so, the real must watch material is in the last 20 minutes. This is where we see the whole con. We see how the media was operating from the same playbook. We see how the messaging they were using was specifically crafted to prey on people’s emotions. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone can watch that documentary and not be furious.
Sadly, This Wasn’t Difficult To Predict
Look, I’m not a medical expert. I’m not a scientist. I wasn’t right about COVID from the beginning. I saw the fear porn videos coming out of China in January and February of 2020. I actually bought the notion that “two weeks to flatten the curve” was the right move. And if I’m being honest with myself, I also wanted a break from being stuck in a shithole office building and working for people I couldn’t relate to anymore. But that was a crappy secondary motivation. I bought the nonsense initially and I have to own that. I was very nervous at first and used hand sanitizer constantly because I legitimately believed what the “health experts” were telling us. They fucked up that trust. I didn’t change one bit.
And then things started to not add up. Literally and figuratively. I saw too many instances of rules for thee but not for me and everything stopped making sense. By the summer of 2021, I started listening to other viewpoints on the science. I found Chris Martenson’s pivot from markets to COVID research paper analysis to be highly beneficial. I never really bought the viability of “warp speed” and I have seen too many opioid addiction horror stories here in the rust belt to ever trust big pharma again. Period. And I wrote about my concerns on Heretic Speculator… numerous times. You can check the receipts.
I think I flipped from a more mocking type of tone to overt antagonism against the machine right after Biden decided it was okay to mandate an experimental medical product for the entire country, risk profile be damned:
I was angry when I wrote that but I knew at that time that my (now former) employer would absolutely comply with whatever Joey Ice Cream said.
Reading all of these posts a year later, and reliving what I was feeling at that time makes me angry again. And I don’t like this feeling. I’ve tried to somewhat “turn the page” from COVID as a new year’s resolution - I went out with a bit of a bang in 2021 when I felt like mainstream sentiment had officially shifted. But I do applaud the people who are still pushing for justice. There must be accountability for the failings of those who believe they know best for the rest of us. They’re certainly not done.
They Think We’re Hamsters
This month we learned the guy who funded the bat soup kitchen lab research from where this virus almost definitely came is getting more funding to study coronaviruses. You can not make this shit up. They are flat out mocking us at this point because nobody has been held accountable yet. The same thing happened after the great financial crisis. Irresponsible risk. Fraudulent credit ratings. Normal people wiped out and yet nobody held responsible. Why?
Because we’ve remained hopelessly divided even when many of our grievances have the same origins; our clout-hungry, wannabe rulers and our debt-based fiat money system. I once heard “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.” I reject that notion entirely. More appropriate; those who can, do, and those who can’t, regulate. Those who understand the game benefit from it and those who aren’t in the club keep running on the wheel like hamsters that have already forgotten what life was like before the wheel. But there are positive signs…
This development is a step in the right direction. Can’t wait to see how the city pays for it but that’s a different discussion entirely. There is still a cold-hearted reality in this announcement; as far as I can tell this ruling applies to city employees not private employees. This lays bare the truth that was evident a year ago even when it was seen as a heretical viewpoint; if the government doesn’t have the power to reinstate private employees who were wrongfully fired over the jab mandate than it doesn’t have the power to coerce the termination of those private employees to begin with.
My Truth
I gave 12 years to the local TV business; my entire post-grad career. 7 of those years were spent with my final station. But the truth is by mid-2021 I did not see myself staying there much longer. It wouldn’t be classy to get into the specifics but lockdowns were eye-opening in a lot of ways and we’ll just leave it at that. Regardless, my desire to find something new in 2022 doesn’t make what happened in 2021 okay. Some of my former coworkers may have forgotten the catalyst behind my departure, but I haven’t.
It’s true I wanted to leave. But I wanted to do it on my terms. The argument could be made that I did leave on my terms by not getting the shot. But I was only able to make that decision because I had planned financially for life after that job and because I have a partner who is amazingly patient with me and very successful. Not everybody was in the position I was in. Without any shred of doubt there are millions who took the jab to save their job because they felt they had to. There are likely millions more who got fired without a plan for the following Monday morning. What happened to them is not fair and it was obvious in real time. They deserve better and the solution isn’t to just leave the house on November 8th.
The Way Forward
Have you heard there is an election coming up?
I swear, I can’t get through a single commercial break without getting bombarded with all of the political ads. The ones that I see are wasted impressions though. I’ve known what I’m going to do on November 8th for over a year now. Of course, what I do will have very little actual impact on things in my state or federally. I don’t really care about that. For me, it’s more about sending the message. I hope there are others who are doing the same.
Fuck around and find out
The reason why we never seem to get accountability isn’t because we elect the wrong people - that’s part of it, but we can do better. We never get accountability because we have been unwilling to sacrifice convenience. We have assumed the right people can be found for the important positions and they’ll do the right thing. Hogwash. It’s too far gone. We have to reject the entire system. We have to take matters into our own hands at the household level non-violently. What we can do all the time to change things is vote every single day with our money and our attention. That’s what I plan to do. That’s the most freedom-respecting approach. And it’s already happening.
The respect for freedom of capital deployment is the fairest outcome because it can be done by all parties. Don’t like the personal choice of a cake-maker? Find a different bakery. Don’t like players taking knees during the anthem? Stop watching the games. Don’t like the commentary from one of your sneaker designers? Cut the designer loose. Don’t like the fiat regime? Take your wealth from the system. And yes…. I’ll say it…. want your employees to all get a shot as a prerequisite for employment? Have at it. But you better be ready to bet your business on that decision. Because guys like me took notes. And if it comes down to an identical product at the same price, I’m picking the proprietor that didn’t side with Pfizer. Every. Single. Time.
The market discovery mechanism will play out the way it’s supposed to. Government coercion not necessary. In the meantime, we need to find our humanity again. Call someone who you haven’t talked to in a long time just because. Don’t block people who think differently than you do. Engage with them. You probably have more in common with them than you might think. But have real conversations with a person rather than text engagements with a computer.
I believe we should make more of an effort to support the people and the small businesses that provide value to our communities. When we have a renaissance in real human interaction broadly, I believe we’ll see benefits in the human experience at the individual level. Nobody else is going to do it for us.