I came across Stacey Rudin early on.
She wrote this in Sept 2020, and it was one of my favourite essays of that year.
Witchcraft, Leprosy, and Covid: “Power to Harm” as Political Weapon | AIER
“Whether the witch is really able to harm or not, whether the person is really infectious or not, the attribution of a hidden power to hurt is a weapon of attack against them. Attributions of occult injury and hidden infection informally entrench the hierarchy of social categories and warn well-placed persons against indiscriminate social intercourse . . . The accusation can be completely outrageous; it will be credible essentially if the political system on whose behalf it is made is accepted.”
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People do not want to be attacked — they’d generally rather fall in line than stick out their necks. This is why “witches” burned, lepers were banished, and schoolchildren spend their days alone in front of screens. Our ingrained tendencies are still just as subject to exploitation as they were in 1693. A formidable political weapon, indeed.
She remains one of my favourite GMC writers.
Rudin wrote this 16 tweet thread recently and I thought it would be a good spine for a stack.
When I use the word “scamdemic,” I am not exaggerating. The fact that all “mitigation” measures were a scam is 100% conclusively proved.
I remember saying to people in 2020 that EVERYTHING that we are being told by the MSM is a lie, in all the different ways that you can be lied to.
I also remember “that look” I used to get, that glazing of the eye, the change of the focal point to somewhere behind me, the looking through me rather than at me. The slight smirk that communicated just the right amount of acceptable condescension, or at best their attempt to acknowledge that I was using the word “lie” metaphorically.
I felt like screaming at them: “I’m not using the word metaphorically!! They are lying in the literal sense of the word.” People seem to only be able to process the concept of lying through the lens of “intention”, if someone doesn’t intend to lie, then whatever they say, can be described in any way BUT lying.
Anyway, we were lied to in every which way about everything. It’s easier to see today for an increasing number of people. Still not enough people, but it’s heading in the right direction.
COVID is still everywhere just like it was in March 2020. People are just less panicked now - that is literally the only difference.
Why are they less panicked? Simple, the MSM has dialled down the fear. The toxic stew of spewed propaganda coming out of the free to air box and MSM papers and sites has reduced. Dial it up and you will dial up fear again.
Here is Andrew Tate with some wisdom.
The CDC stopped asymptomatic testing and quarantining after exposure—the two things that were so disruptive to our lives throughout 2020 and 2021. If they kept doing these things, our lives would continue being disrupted. When they stop, we are free.
Jeffrey Tucker, one of my GMC heroes, wrote this must read essay recently, touching on the asymptomatic point:
In English: everyone can pretty much go back to normal. Focus on illness that is medically significant. Stop worrying about positive cases because nothing is going to stop them. Think about the bigger picture of overall social health. End the compulsion. Thank you. It’s only two and a half years late.
What about mass testing?
Forget it: “All persons should seek testing for active infection when they are symptomatic or if they have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19.”
Also, if you haven’t figured it out by now, the whole “asymptomatic spread” idea was a fraud from the start. This from Senger:
Xi Jinping Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize Far More Than WHO (substack.com)
Unfortunately, the same goes for the WHO’s advice on mass testing based on “asymptomatic spread,” creating the illusion of a permanent pandemic. The WHO makes clear that this concept of widespread Covid asymptomatic spread was based on early data from China which could not be recreated in other countries.
Likewise, upon further examination of the WHO’s guidance on mass PCR testing for Covid, this too relied on Chinese journal articles, each of which advised the use of 37 to 40 cycle thresholds for PCR testing, this becoming the global standard pursuant to which over 85% of cases were false positives, as later confirmed by the New York Times.
Now back to Rudin:
The disease itself, under both sets of rules (test/quarantine or don’t) is exactly the same. Test more, you find more. It is a choose-your-own-pandemic. CDC chose a Category 5 pandemic for ~29 months, and now chooses a Category 1.
Following the CDC as if it were a God caused “the pandemic.” That’s what ripped up lives. And what kills me, really rips me up, is that so many people knew it was bogus, hated ALL of it, yet complied anyway. When else in history have people complied with horrific policies?
I’m reminded of this passage, highlighted by Senger, from They Thought They Were Free:
One Giant Fraud - by Michael P Senger - The New Normal (substack.com)
“And one day … you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves.”
– Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free
They ripped up the fabric of society. They, with our help, changed the spirit of the place.
I thought humans would have learned from history, would know that governments always commit the worst atrocities, harnessing the power of the masses via propaganda. “When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”
The masses meld through fast thoughts. Thoughts that only have two moving parts in them.
He’s had a heart attack, he needs rest. (Fast thought)
The virus is airborne, a mask will curb it. (Fast thought)
Vaccines work, take this vaccine. (Fast thought)
People moving around will spread the virus, stop people moving. (Fast thought)
Truth resides in slow thought. Learn to think slowly, to contend with more than two variables. Beware of fast ideas, they are everywhere. As Jung said, people don’t have ideas, ideas have people. What he really meant was that fast-ideas have people.
This scamdemic was brilliant in that it enlisted the greatest of intelligentsia, Ivys, storied professors, & most decorated intellectual stars. Regular people just followed.
Jeffery Tucker wrote profoundly about this disconnect back in July 2020:
The Bloodless Political Class and Its Lack of Empathy | AIER
Adam Smith explained empathy as a feature of the human personality. “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel,” he wrote, “we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel like in the situation … By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments … and become in some measure the same person with him.”
That’s what real life is like. But political life today seems to seek to banish that very human feeling. It’s as if they are playing a video game featuring all of us but we are mere figures on a screen programmed to do what they want. They have no obligation to understand us, much less worry about the pain they inflict, because, like figures on a gaming screen, we surely don’t feel pain at all.
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The emotional gap between the rulers and ruled has never been wider in modern times. It seems completely unsustainable. It’s like they aren’t even trying to connect with people.
Toby Rogers has recently written about this breakdown in empathy (see Theory no. 8).
But we each have a duty to question authority, to ensure we aren’t led astray like so many before us.
It was obvious from the first day that even if we “locked down,” trashing our Constitution & parading over dissenters’ basic rights, when we reopened THE DISEASE WOULD STILL BE THERE. Why slow it down when everyone will get it anyway?
I remember saying to a Dutch friend in 2020, how do they get out of this? What does “winning” look like? They are locking down the world because of a virus, but it won’t go away, so what’s the criteria to unlock the world? Vaccines?
Well here we are today, is the world healthier? Are you, with your two, three, four doses, healthier?
Do you still believe and trust your government?
Or have you started to consider the possibility that it is your enemy?
They kept going long after hospitals were WAY in the clear. They forced people to avoid COVID even if they didn’t want to avoid COVID. They never discussed the minuscule, flu-like fatality rate. There was no point to any of that, since we will all still get it, now or later.
From the start the IFR was only 0.23%, dropping to 0.15% by late 2021 and has been well under 0.1% for a long time now. The flu is accepted at around 0.1% if you were wondering.
You were sold a pup.
To the people who are secretly embarrassed by your behavior over the past 2.5 years, allowing the government to turn totalitarian while regular people pay the heavy price: shame on you. What you have done is embarrassing and unforgivable. How could you?
If you know someone that you shamed or ridiculed, for not going along with the crowd, go and say you are sorry to them. Say that you were wrong. I have had one friend, and one friend only, who said to me that he realises he was wrong, that he didn’t pay enough attention and that he regrets taking the juice. That’s not a good stat.
People were blacklisted for not being vaccinated, denied entry to restaurants as if they were diseased, people died alone, teenagers committed suicide, people upended their lives to move out of the northeast and California to Florida and Texas, starting all over.
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Why did you turn your backs on neighbors and friends because they disagreed with you? Because MSNBC delivered the instruction? These are people you knew and respected, & now you don’t trust their cleanliness protocols so you want a negative test for them to attend your party?
A now ex-friend called the cops on a group of mothers gathering in a park.
I know of grade-school girls who have been banned from playing soccer (OUTSIDE) for not being vaccinated. Shameful, unforgivable. Who are you people? Do you call yourselves compassionate? You can’t make an exception for this child and her divergent point of view?
Here is Craig Kelly asking “What is wrong with you people?!”
“Shame on the lot of you.”
Because you are that smart? And she is that stupid? Look in the mirror, you fool. I bet you consider yourself “inclusive” and “empathetic.” Time for some soul-searching.
I’m not sure to what extent Rudin is awake, but I suspect that with her observations around dysfunctional “empathy”, she is within a whisker of understanding Theory no.8 (see above).
Because the CDC said one thing that day, you hurt a kid. You bankrupted someone. You forced a 90-year-old to die scared and alone. YOU did this, YOU helped them do this. Now the CDC says grandmas can die accompanied again, although same disease is still everywhere.
Some even used kids as human shields.
"Vaccinated" children as human shields: A Saddam Hussein Story (substack.com)
What does following these rules get you? Would you rather be the person that hid the Jew in your basement, or the one who slammed the door in their faces, ensuring your own safety? I guess we know now.
If you ever wondered what you would have done in Nazi Germany…now you know.
Maybe “scamdemic” is not the best word. It’s more like an “exposure-demic.” This period of our lives have pulled the mask off of everyone’s faces. We know who everyone is now. I’m happy with my result. Are you?
Rudin is angry, rightly so, so am I.
But we are going to need to arrive at an unforgetting forgiveness at some point.
I’m simmering furious, especially at former friends and family who defended the indefensible by denying and aggressively avoiding the need to assess assumptions. It’s been a surreal experience living through this social tsunami.
I hope one day someone will have the time and energy to collate the work of all these brilliant sub stack writers (and others) into a compendium of righteous indignation at the brutal crimes committed against humanity by these moronic, dispassionate, uncaring, non-empathetic individuals who are given the privileged to reign over us. There will be many volumes for future generations to study as a warning not to allow bureaucrats, computer modellers and medical tyrants anywhere near the seat of power.