An Amnesty? How about an apology first?
In general, it’s difficult to write about covid - not because there’s little to say - but that there’s so bloody much to say. Trying to write down everything The Experts™ got wrong, or the list of authoritarian and illiberal excesses of governments, would turn into something longer than The Lord of the Rings.
Government Ringwraiths unleashed their campaign of fear and the covid-orcs rampaged against the smaller forces of sanity, true science, and goodness. But the Gandalfs of the pandemic - the Istari like Eugyppius, ElGatoMalo, Malone and McCullough1 - stood firm and prevailed.
Not everything was obvious from the outset, but so much was. It’s fascinating that the small band of “science deniers” turned out to be right vastly more often than The Experts™.
I’m all for a bit of forgive and forget when someone has transgressed (are they merely pretending to gress?), but an apology is usually a good place to start when seeking forgiveness.
The author of this piece in the Atlantic (which I haven’t read because Atlantic articles sit smugly behind a paywall) seems to imply a kind of symmetry here. We need to forgive one another.
Eh? What, pray tell, did those of us on the side of science and truth actually do wrong? We weren’t the ones calling for the unvaxxed to be denied basic human rights and freedoms, to be stripped of their livelihoods, and treated like sub-human disease carriers. We weren’t the ones filling skateboard parks with sand so that kids couldn’t play. Outside. Or fining people for sitting alone on a park bench. Outside. Or closing down small businesses. Or turning people away from important hospital treatments and investigations. Or letting our loved ones die alone. And so much more.
Amnesty? You can shove your amnesty where Pelosi’s intruder is alleged to have shoved his hammer.
Come back to me when you’ve shown some true humility and remorse - and then we might have a basis for progress. But we know that, if we had “ScaryGovernmentPandemic™ - the Sequel” happening next month, you miserable fuckers would do the same thing all over again without a second thought.
If, for example, you still can’t see why this piece of propaganda is utterly vile and reprehensible - you haven’t learned a thing.
A while back I produced the following list as a sarcastic reminder of just some of the things The Experts™ and our governments forced upon us. Things that went against stuff we already knew. We weren’t “in the dark” at all. We just gleefully ignored science and went all covid culty and Pferal.
The almost complete U-Turn we did on stuff we already knew to be true was breath-taking in its scope and pervasiveness.
Almost from the outset we KNEW that covid was not that deadly, was overwhelmingly a disease that affected the elderly more severely, and that lockdowns would cause more harm than good.
AND, let’s face it, we already KNEW that masks as a tool to prevent the spread of a respiratory virus were about as much use as a cardboard hammer (unless your surname is Pelosi).
Even after a year the panic still raged, and yet the complete lack of foundation for that panic became clearer by the day. Even with the inflated official covid death figures it was blisteringly clear that covid posed a very minor risk to young people. For example, in England & Wales, after a year of covid (figures up to 9th April 2021), there were 220 ‘covid’ deaths in the under 30’s. That’s 220 out of a total population in this age group of about 22 million. That’s 0.001%, or 1 in 100,000.
These are official figures and even with the nonsensical exaggeration and inflation of the death tally we can see there’s nothing even remotely close to being anything like an “emergency” here for this age group.
But those calling for more focused protection strategies were derided, ridiculed and, somewhat ludicrously, dismissed as “fringe” scientists.
We knew. We weren’t “in the dark”. We just decided to go full tilt at the covid windmill and ignore (and censor) the voices of reason and sanity.
Amnesty? In about another century, when my apoplectic rage at what you did and what you became has subsided a fraction, I might reconsider. Meanwhile:
And lots more too. Many people could be, and should be, included in that list of Istari. They struggled against censorship and censure but provided much-needed voices of sanity and clarity. They reminded us all that we were not alone, that we hadn’t gone crazy, and that some people with a lot of brain juice fundamentally disagreed with The Experts™
In German, the words for amnesty (Amnestie) and amnesia (Amnesie) only differ by a T. Which looks like a hammer.
Forgive? Yes, as that is a personal, heart issue.
Forget? Reconcile? Call a truce? No. You made it clear that you’d rather my family lose our jobs and be banned from society, in other words, starve or be imprisoned.
I forgive your madness. I forgive that you got swept up into this cult, ignoring all of us warning it was a cult. But we can no longer be friends. That would require trust. And I trust that you are a threat to my family and me.