Why Can't We All Just Get Along?
Division in the Covid truth movement has had me thinking back to my Unfriend.
Some years ago during my California days I visited an old school classmate who was living in Los Angeles who had tracked me down on social media. She was successful of sorts, in the sense that she had gotten out of Toledo and was doing the Hollywood cliche: working as a stand in actress while also moonlighting as a waitress. She seemed to take an interest in former classmates who had left Ohio as she had. We got to drinking and I spent the night at her house and the conversation soon turned to a dispute she had had with another classmate who she had visited in Oregon weeks before.
The story was long and meandering and complicated and I knew well that I was only hearing her side of the tale. I had no opinion on the matter, as I had not seen this other classmate since high school and I had no personal problem with her. This old friend was not satisfied with that. She needed my full sympathy for the terrible thing this former classmate had done and insisted that she was a very bad person who I should never talk to again. Well I hadn’t seen her directly since high school, so no problem there. My later unfriend was not content with that, as she noticed a few weeks later that this other classmate was, gasp, still one of my Facebook friends. She needed me to unfriend her right away in a show of solidarity for what a bad person this other classmate was. I could not do that. I found the whole argument petty and nonsensical.
It’s not lost on me that some of the people engaged in the truth in Covid movement are attacking each other. Celia Farber weighed in on this.
She was mostly referring to Steve Kirsch’s attacks on people in the “there is no virus” crowd. I hadn’t even heard of most of these people and the ones I have read like Jon Rappoport I found engaging. I don’t reflexively side one way or another on the issue, by the way.
Being a long time ‘antivaxxer’ and a veteran on the mommy wars regarding infant and childhood vaccination, I’ve seen it too. Sticking to a middle ground can lead to both sides calling you a baby killer, one for not jabbing your kids sufficiently and the other side for you not being hysterical enough in your warnings that your child will surely die if you give them another vaccine ever.
Ironically the middle ground is where most people are. All sides lose it at their own peril. I saw this comment on Steve Kirsch’s page and thought I would share.
Writes The Heterodox Cheering Section …1 hr ago
dear Steve Kirsch good-guy & tireless truth teller, please "make nice" and shake hands with those other good people with whom you disagree. It's a pretty big couch, room on it for everyone.
We are all on the side of good--no more forced jabs, let people have access to whatever treatment they want, no censorship or cancellations. I don't know Madame Waugh from Adam but Tom Cowan, Sam Bailey, Mark Bailey, Andrew Kaufman, Jon Rappoport have all been around a long time and are the real deal, doing their best.
Virus or schmirus matters not in the grand scheme of things. Smart adults can disagree. You're doing your best too. Please make nice--it helps the other side if this one falls apart bickering so let's not hand that to them on a platter. Instead, Let's Keep Together (like Haley Mills in The Parent Trap) as I'm now sounding like my grandmother insisting that everyone get along with each other. Thank you for all you do.
Obviously this is not new even in this space. Alex Berenson has attacked Ivermectin, much to the dismay of Dr. Pierre Kory, who likens it to being shot by friendly fire, and Dr. Robert Malone, who was publicly taken down for it. Alex is a brilliant journalist who hits more than he misses but I do not agree with him on everything. I still read him and think he can be a compelling writer.
I tend to think the virus/there is no virus debate is a false yes/no paradigm that moves people to opposite goalposts unnecessarily. I think it is better understood under the broad truth in all things Covid movement as a seven point scale with one side labelled physical and the other side labelled metaphysical. The heavy duty virologists, doctors, scientists, the ones looking at exact subvariants of concern and tracking genetic sequences in patents and looking for smoking gun evidence of a lab leak/intentional bioweapon spread occupy the goalpost nearer the physical 1 point on the scale. Do I want their contributions in this journey? Absolutely.
Point 7 on this scale is mostly dealing with the esoteric and psychological and the power of the individual and the mind to create circumstances that promote or destroy well being. They are taking advantage of an irrefutable observation: the thing called Covid does not spread the way it does in zombie movies, where every verifiably exposed person has a predictable length until illness onset and death. Some people who are exposed to Covid don’t get sick or even test positive, some get very sick and die, and some get mildly sick. Sometimes the thing called Covid jumps to populations that are completely isolated , where it seems to emerge spontaneously in someone’s body. There are holes in our understanding of viruses and how they are spread.
People on the metaphysical ends of the scale look at things like media mass panic, isolation and evil intent. They also look at individual healing modalities that might include meditation, prayer and positive thinking. There are fascinating theories regarding things that might be affecting case rates like 5G rollouts. I’ve charted astrology here and there. Do I want those people to be contributing their voices to this conversation? Absolutely. There is plenty of room on this couch.
I tend to think on the hierarchy of disagreement that there is a step below name calling. It’s reductionist isolation based on name calling. It’s not just ‘This is a bad person who should not be trusted’ but ‘If you support me you will not engage with the bad person who cannot be trusted. You’re part of my team now.’ That level leads to a lot of bad things. Shaming should never be part of an open dialogue.
To a certain degree I think folks should stay in their lane. I’m either smart enough, or dumb enough, to know there’s lots of things that I don’t know. But I’m awarding a big win to the first person who shows how the Sars-cov-2 virus changes while a monk is meditating healing intent on it. Why do these things always have to be mutually exclusive?
the smoking gun here is that all the ad hominem seems to be coming from one side. drive-by attacks and a lot of sniping. yeah maybe some of this crew are scarred from old battles but you leave that baggage outside.. steve was willing to engage and actually got to a point of negotiation over a debate before the other side apparently bailed over some technicality. i don't spend much time at steve's comments section because there isn't much action - and i strongly suspect that there is an op at play as well.
all the og warrior moms who have been in this since before del bigtree existed are the real role models here.. looking at how the first round of the lethal injection campaign completely tanked when it came down to preschoolers and infants, i think there's hope. trouble is that big harma is pivoting to mrna for the entire childhood vax schedule and that's going to be much harder to resist. we have a slog ahead of us.
I had never heard of the no-viruses theory until about a month ago. I have no set opinion on the matter. But reading the comments in Celia's post, I recognized something. I mentioned it on Sage Hana's post,
"from my youth growing up in evangelical churches, one of which was just this side of a cult. It smelled like zealotry willing to spite the whole world for one's truth."