COVID: The after times

 

At American Thinker, Alex Lekas takes a thoughtful look at the aftermath of the COVID “pandemic” – and some readers here will surely relate to his frame of reference.  He starts off:

The Covidian orthodoxy is beginning to crumble. Some governments have discovered that their approach did not improve anything. On the contrary, at least one study shows that the myriad restrictions on normal life have had the opposite effect. That confirms what many people said 18 months ago when challenging the official dogma was considered an act of heresy.

Now what? There is going to be a clear delineation of human interactions in the aftermath when compared to the before times. It is almost impossible to expect otherwise.

Like many of you, I have learned things about people I thought I knew that were hard to believe. It has been quite the learning curve to find out who would happily serve as an enforcer to push the state's dictates, who would just as happily shut people out of society, celebrate their firing, or deny them healthcare for the sake of making a political point. Once you have seen the true measure of a person, one who would support steps that harm friends and relatives and justify that support [without] hesitation or regret, how can you see such people in the same light again?

You can't trust them. You can’t discuss anything of substance with them. You can’t pretend that none of this happened. It is impossible to once again respect or like people whose inner tyrant rose to the surface so easily, and that will be among the lasting legacies of this sorry spectacle, one that should sadden us all. The friendships forever tarnished, the family ties that are irreparably broken, the neighbors you no longer recognize; for many people, those will be the most tangible results of their COVID experience.

There is no joy in saying "I told you so" as the narrative starts falling apart. The same people and publications who dismissively, if not derisively, hand-waved warnings of second-order effects from mandates and lockdowns as so much conspiracy babble, are now reporting on the second-order effects of mandates and lockdowns. But worse, they are doing so without the faintest hint of humility or self-awareness, without the slightest acknowledgment of their complicity in pushing fear while stifling open, honest discussion. Then again, why would they?

Mr. Lekas concludes:

The path forward is not likely to be pleasant. It is going to be difficult to watch the various divisions of the Karenwaffe pivot and claim that they knew all along the assaults on freedom would not work. Of all the lies people can tell, the worst are the ones they tell themselves. This is where the truth about character is revealed. The old saying holds that tough times build character. That is not true. Tough times reveal character. What many of us have seen cannot be unseen and it will resonate for some time.

Full article is here.   

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Make Canada Great Again

 Seen at PowerLine's "Mid-Week in Pictures: Convoy Edition":

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The Treachery of VP Mike Pence

 

In the 2020 election, Mike Pence rubber-stamped the state vote certifications, when there were many members of Congress voting to reject some certifications and send them back to states where fraud was rampant (on video surveillance; in anomalies – eg. more votes than registered voters; sequentially numbered mail-in ballots, and so on). Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary provides a convenient summary and compilation video of the fraud; this blog posted on the documentary here. 

Paul Mirengoff argues at PowerLine that Pence had no authority to challenge suspected certifications, but I remain skeptical.  Even if Mr. Mirengoff is correct, and there were legal restraints on Pence, it hardly exonerates the former VP from all the sabotage during President Trump’s term, as Emerald Robinson outlines:

Whenever the subject of Mike Pence comes up in casual conversation, I always ask the same question: “Do you know Olivia Troye? Do you know Jennifer Williams? Do you know Katherine Seaman and Josh Pitcock?”

If you’re drawing a blank with these names then I’m sorry to inform you that you were not paying close enough attention to politics during the Trump Years. Also, you were not paying attention to my Twitter feed — because I was reporting on these problems all the time during the Trump Administration.

So, without further ado, let’s review all the evidence against Mike Pence. Trust me: there’s a lot of evidence.

1) Who Fired General Michael Flynn?

Let’s begin with Mike Pence’s least favorite question: “Why did you insist that President Trump fire his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in the opening days of the administration?” The official story is that Gen. Flynn had lied to Mike Pence about Flynn’s contacts with Russian diplomats. Nobody has bothered to ask Pence exactly how he was informed about Flynn’s private conversations. Think about it: somebody went to Pence with transcripts of Flynn’s calls, and told Pence that Flynn was a national security risk. Who would have access to such phone calls? Who would want to lie about the nature of those phone calls to get Flynn fired?

It almost certainly must have been disgraced FBI agent Peter Strozk.

It’s likely that Strzok was the one who pushed for VP Pence to fire Flynn because we know that Peter Strozk's assistant was Katherine Seaman — the wife of Mike Pence’s chief of staff Josh Pitcock. We also have the text exchanges between Strozk and Page discussing infiltrating the Trump White House in great detail. (This was the subject of an extraordinary letter from Senator Grassley and Senator Johnson to AG Bill Barr.) What did Pence know about the FBI’s attempts to spy on the Trump White House? Is it even possible that Mike Pence was totally unaware that his chief of staff’s spouse worked directly for the chief of the counter-espionage unit of the FBI?

We know that President Obama warned President Trump not to hire Flynn in 2016. We also know that Flynn himself believes that Obama advised Trump against hiring him because Flynn knew about the Obama administration’s role in spying on Trump’s presidential campaign. Removing Flynn as Trump’s National Security Advisor was a top priority for the Deep State.

In other words, Mike Pence was the first person to set the Russia Hoax into motion.

. . .

Much more by Ms. Robinson here. 

Mr. Pence is a swamp-dwelling, card-carrying Deep State.  I first suspected that when, as Governor of Indiana, he claimed to oppose and cancel Common Core in Indiana’s schools, while at the same time he was ushering in the same policies under a new name through the back door.  My alarm bell didn’t go off loudly enough. But as Ms. Robinson points out, I wasn’t paying close enough attention. 

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It’s official: Lockdowns were useless

 

Eric Lendrum at American Greatness has shocking news: 

A newly-released study from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University revealed that the sweeping lockdowns in response to the Chinese coronavirus had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the study was conducted through an analysis of 24 different studies that all focused on government mandates ordering the closure of various aspects of everyday life, including school and business shutdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and stay-at-home orders, among others.

The comprehensive review, conducted by Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, determined that these measures collectively reduced the rate of COVID fatalities in America and Europe by a mere 0.2 percent.

When the studies were narrowed down to individual types of lockdown measures, such as stay-at-home orders alone, the survey revealed that stay-at-home orders actually slightly increased the number of deaths during COVID. ...

Shocking!  Full report is here.

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Crispus Attucks: America's First Patriot

 

image credit: americanhistorycentral.com

February is Black History Month.  Athena Thorne offers us this history lesson at PJ Media:

Black History Month Should Begin With Crispus Attucks,
America's First Patriot

Every February, America goes through a month-long ritual where it reminds everyone that blacks and whites have beef, and black people only matter historically when they’ve been victimized by white people. Setting aside the first part — the incessant picking at a great scab that is never allowed to heal — black people are taught to feel angry, less important, and, through their identity as victims, trained to measure any success they might have as a function of either a defeat for or a gratuity from white people.

If Black History Month were truly meant to be a paean to black Americans, it would highlight blacks whose historical contributions to America include more besides ending slavery and overcoming prejudice. While those are undoubtedly massive steps forward for any society, they are not uniquely American.

. . .

Crispus Attucks’ name ought to be as well-known as Paul Revere’s: Attucks [a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry] was the first American Patriot killed as he confronted the British at the very beginning of the American Revolution.

. . .

In March of 1770, tensions were running red hot between American colonists and their British rulers. On that fateful day, Attucks helped lead a group of angry sailors who confronted British soldiers stationed in Boston. The sailors wielded clubs, hurled snowballs, and shouted at the soldiers. In a panic, the soldiers fired into the crowd. Attucks was the very first person killed in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre, a pivotal event that brought the colonies and England to the threshold of war.

Crispus Attucks lay in state in Faneuil Hall alongside the other four men killed in the Massacre. The City of Boston waved segregation laws so he could also be buried with them. It is right and just that he was so honored, and he deserves to be a household name in this country.  . . .

Crispus Attucks was the very first American to give his life to the cause of liberating the colonies from British rule and creating the freest, greatest nation man has yet conceived. How is that not at least as important?

Read the rest here.

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Vaccine Passports: Coming to a neighborhood near you?

 

Terry Paulding at American Thinker describes what life is like now in San Francisco, but it’s not just Californians who are miserable; the tyranny of elite politicians and bureaucrats can spread anywhere:

After two solid years of COVID restrictions, many of us have reached a breaking point.  Witness the mass exodus to other states from sunny California.  Who wouldn't want to get out of here, away from this strangling, prison-like "reality"?

Malaise is now spreading throughout the country, as a direct result of Biden's mass migration.  How do you know that your chosen destination hasn't been set upon by a horde of unknown, unemployed migrants?  This makes moving elsewhere less attractive.  You can't know what you'll find when you get there, but it might be just as bad — or if clandestine flights continue, will be soon.  Moving to the south of Texas or Arizona is certainly no longer attractive.  You must pity the people stuck dealing with the relentless and dangerous influx.

Locally, as of yesterday, I've become an Untouchable.  I can no longer eat in a restaurant in any of the communities surrounding my home, or legally enter my gym, attend a concert, go to a museum, or do anything that enriches life beyond the bare bones of going shopping for food or goods or taking a walk outdoors.  Why?  Because I refuse to carry or show a "vaccine passport" or share my "status."

. . .

They have ways to keep us in line.  Why else the twisted J6 narrative and the prisoners' plight?  It's a blatant warning to all of us, in this über-political atmosphere, that unconstitutional imprisonment, without bail or trial, could be anyone's fate.  Watch what you do or say!  You could be next!

We are heading precipitously toward becoming a society that is as repressive and over-controlled as any communist regime.  Force everyone to have a digital vaccine card, and they have won control.  They'll be able to identify — and eventually weed out — those of us who are "non-compliant."  The gamble, that they can get it done before the midterms...we shall see!  Hopefully, although we seem to be losing the battle right now, we can still grind slowly toward winning the war.

The full column is here. 

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Socialists Condemn Workers Of The World For Uniting

 

You have nothing to lose but your chains!  The Babylon Bee strikes again:

OTTAWA—Socialists around the world are condemning the trucker freedom protest in Canada as the working class unites to defend their human rights. 

"When workers of the world unite against overbearing government mandates, that's literal fascism," said a sobbing socialist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from deep within his top-secret bunker underneath Washington, D.C. "True, compassionate socialism is when the government partners with private corporations to force experimental drugs on the populace and threaten their very livelihoods if they don't. Everyone knows that."

According to sources, socialists were initially thrilled by the trucker convoy, as they had mistaken it for a bread line. To their dismay, they soon found out that it was a toxic freedom march organized by the working class against the Canadian bourgeois. 

. . .

Read the rest here.  Good fun. 

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