“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” – George Orwell, English novelist, essayist, and journalist and critic (1903-1950)
Excellent article. This is the unacknowledged trauma for the rest of us - that they all just went on with their lives and pretended that what happened, didn't.
In the last couple of years, I've been trying to come to terms with how I behaved during COVIDtimes. I was one of those scientistic, "fix-your-mask", jab-worshipping shitlibs. I look back at myself in that time with horror. I actually disinvited my brother to a thanksgiving get together because he refused to wear a mask at our outdoor shindig. I cringe every time I think of it. I have since apologized. I was spineless, and useful to the cultural Zeitgeist of the time.
What a crime that was perpetrated on the world. And as you intimated, it is still being perpetrated through its denial and downplaying by governments, corporations, and other power brokers.
Sorry for the delay in reply, my substack notifications don't seem to have been working recently. Regardless, your self-awareness is extremely commendable. Speaking as someone who lost a lot of friends throughout the COVID, primarily due to my beseeching attempts to stop them from getting jab, it is genuinely heartening that the denial is perhaps not as wholesale as I imagined it. Thanks for taking the time to read.
Thank you so much for talking about this, I have felt like this for so long where I talk to my coworkers and everyone seems to have an amnesia to what happened and how we all behaved during that time.
Thank you. And yes, it's really nothing short of mind-boggling how many people have compartmentalized the entire thing. Even a lot of those who refused the vaccine seem to have just stopped there, as if it was merely a standalone instance of corruption, rather than indicative of a far wider rot.
Yep, exactly what's happened and happening. Fantastic writing. But what to do? I'm still traumatized everyday about what people did to each other. I just can't integrate it, so unreal. And yet far worse is in the making, and I fear it unstoppable. Idiots still drive by my house alone with a mask on - this is far from over.
I've been trying to warn people about that ever since, but the reality is, most people just don't want to know what's coming down the pipeline. Also, more depressing still is the fact that a sizeable percentage of the population actually enjoyed the COVID years, whether because it afforded them some sense of faux moral authority, because they liked having an excuse to stay home and watch Netflix/play video, or simply because they liked having firmly established rules to follow.
We have a real disconnect in society, and I suspect a lot of lonely, isolated people.
I think it also created a sense of inclusion (for people who had previously long-felt excluded) and a newfound sense of tribal belonging.
Like a warm welcoming hug from “Team Virtuous”.
Aldous Huxley once wrote;
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
That's what I'm sayin, how horrifying is that? What kind of sick imbecilic bastards would enjoy being a part of that kind of sadistic death cult. Oh wait a minute, it's most people. Does the Stanford prison experiment come to mind? Is this whole society a variation of the Stanford prison experiment? https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html
I actually wrote an article about precisely that topic a while ago called "On the Moral Fortitude of PureBloods" which basically was my own attempt to answer how some people could behave in such a manner while others didn't. The best answer I came up with, as I tried by best to lay out, essentially boiled down to psychological, emotional, and by extension, moral immaturity.
Indeed. Mix that with incentive and access to easy bubble money (greed) and stuff that gives the fantasy of being powerful and you’ve got the ingredients for a moral societal atomic bomb. A young woman once told me they have “wicked imaginations”. There was a Star Trek episode called The Squire Of Gothos where a young immature demigod named Trelane goes wild playing games of control and power until his parents appear and make him essentially go to his room. I find this a fitting parody for what you’re saying.
Our institutions failed us during COVID because timid and self-serving people put political expediency and career above public service and truth.
Now the same people are busily trying to edit the record and suppress our memory of their errors and cowardice. I guess this is just how timid and self-serving people behave.
But we can’t have such people running our institutions. The cost is mounting a
and the disasters are accumulating. We need sensible, independent-minded, courageous leaders. If our academic system can’t produce them, it should be scrapped.
This is not a serious essay. It’s a hyperbolic, conspiratorial rant masquerading as psychological and political critique. It’s therapy for people who think wearing a mask was the moral equivalent of being a Hiroshima survivor. You slap Freud quotes and Orwell references on top of what amounts to an emotional tantrum about public health inconveniences. The real “collective amnesia” here is forgetting that a novel virus killed millions globally while systems scrambled to adapt and made human errors along the way. But sure, let’s compare arrows on Walmart floors to totalitarian brainwashing.
No data, no intellectual rigor, just another flat-earther level screed about how “they” are out to get you and everyone you love. These types of posts — this thesaurus-laden, grievance caked fake profundity attempting to convince people the system is out to get them is the real danger to society. You create radicals. You create mindless, frothing zombies who think “I did my own research” makes you the prophet of your own cult; as if orthodoxy and thousands of years of learned truths and best practices don’t actually exist.
This shit is just embarrassing. The internet didn’t just democratize access to information, it lowered the barrier to entry to false prophets—the ones who worship at the altar of contrarianism above literally all else— through the floor.
One of the best commentaries regarding this tragedy I've read.
Thank you sincerely, I'm very glad you found it worth your time.
Excellent article. This is the unacknowledged trauma for the rest of us - that they all just went on with their lives and pretended that what happened, didn't.
Thanks mate, much appreciated.
In the last couple of years, I've been trying to come to terms with how I behaved during COVIDtimes. I was one of those scientistic, "fix-your-mask", jab-worshipping shitlibs. I look back at myself in that time with horror. I actually disinvited my brother to a thanksgiving get together because he refused to wear a mask at our outdoor shindig. I cringe every time I think of it. I have since apologized. I was spineless, and useful to the cultural Zeitgeist of the time.
What a crime that was perpetrated on the world. And as you intimated, it is still being perpetrated through its denial and downplaying by governments, corporations, and other power brokers.
Lord have mercy. ☦︎
Sorry for the delay in reply, my substack notifications don't seem to have been working recently. Regardless, your self-awareness is extremely commendable. Speaking as someone who lost a lot of friends throughout the COVID, primarily due to my beseeching attempts to stop them from getting jab, it is genuinely heartening that the denial is perhaps not as wholesale as I imagined it. Thanks for taking the time to read.
That was brilliant. Well written.
Thank you for taking the time to read, and even more so for your kind words.
Thank you so much for talking about this, I have felt like this for so long where I talk to my coworkers and everyone seems to have an amnesia to what happened and how we all behaved during that time.
Thank you. And yes, it's really nothing short of mind-boggling how many people have compartmentalized the entire thing. Even a lot of those who refused the vaccine seem to have just stopped there, as if it was merely a standalone instance of corruption, rather than indicative of a far wider rot.
Yep, exactly what's happened and happening. Fantastic writing. But what to do? I'm still traumatized everyday about what people did to each other. I just can't integrate it, so unreal. And yet far worse is in the making, and I fear it unstoppable. Idiots still drive by my house alone with a mask on - this is far from over.
I've been trying to warn people about that ever since, but the reality is, most people just don't want to know what's coming down the pipeline. Also, more depressing still is the fact that a sizeable percentage of the population actually enjoyed the COVID years, whether because it afforded them some sense of faux moral authority, because they liked having an excuse to stay home and watch Netflix/play video, or simply because they liked having firmly established rules to follow.
We have a real disconnect in society, and I suspect a lot of lonely, isolated people.
I think it also created a sense of inclusion (for people who had previously long-felt excluded) and a newfound sense of tribal belonging.
Like a warm welcoming hug from “Team Virtuous”.
Aldous Huxley once wrote;
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
Absolutely fitting.
That's what I'm sayin, how horrifying is that? What kind of sick imbecilic bastards would enjoy being a part of that kind of sadistic death cult. Oh wait a minute, it's most people. Does the Stanford prison experiment come to mind? Is this whole society a variation of the Stanford prison experiment? https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html
I actually wrote an article about precisely that topic a while ago called "On the Moral Fortitude of PureBloods" which basically was my own attempt to answer how some people could behave in such a manner while others didn't. The best answer I came up with, as I tried by best to lay out, essentially boiled down to psychological, emotional, and by extension, moral immaturity.
Indeed. Mix that with incentive and access to easy bubble money (greed) and stuff that gives the fantasy of being powerful and you’ve got the ingredients for a moral societal atomic bomb. A young woman once told me they have “wicked imaginations”. There was a Star Trek episode called The Squire Of Gothos where a young immature demigod named Trelane goes wild playing games of control and power until his parents appear and make him essentially go to his room. I find this a fitting parody for what you’re saying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moM5sdbPM54
Our institutions failed us during COVID because timid and self-serving people put political expediency and career above public service and truth.
Now the same people are busily trying to edit the record and suppress our memory of their errors and cowardice. I guess this is just how timid and self-serving people behave.
But we can’t have such people running our institutions. The cost is mounting a
and the disasters are accumulating. We need sensible, independent-minded, courageous leaders. If our academic system can’t produce them, it should be scrapped.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/quietly-correcting-the-covid-narrative
This is not a serious essay. It’s a hyperbolic, conspiratorial rant masquerading as psychological and political critique. It’s therapy for people who think wearing a mask was the moral equivalent of being a Hiroshima survivor. You slap Freud quotes and Orwell references on top of what amounts to an emotional tantrum about public health inconveniences. The real “collective amnesia” here is forgetting that a novel virus killed millions globally while systems scrambled to adapt and made human errors along the way. But sure, let’s compare arrows on Walmart floors to totalitarian brainwashing.
No data, no intellectual rigor, just another flat-earther level screed about how “they” are out to get you and everyone you love. These types of posts — this thesaurus-laden, grievance caked fake profundity attempting to convince people the system is out to get them is the real danger to society. You create radicals. You create mindless, frothing zombies who think “I did my own research” makes you the prophet of your own cult; as if orthodoxy and thousands of years of learned truths and best practices don’t actually exist.
This shit is just embarrassing. The internet didn’t just democratize access to information, it lowered the barrier to entry to false prophets—the ones who worship at the altar of contrarianism above literally all else— through the floor.