Welcome to the Revolution: Highlights from Defeat the Mandates in DC

So if you are the big tree,
We are the small ax.
Ready to cut you down.
To cut you down.

~Bob Marley

We will not comply
With the institutions
Sick illusions.

~ Jimmy Levy and Hi-Rez

"There are cheap, safe, widely available and effective medicines that can treat this disease.  That information has been suppressed.  They are killing us with censorship and propaganda, manipulating the minds of millions.  Enough with the medical tyranny!  We must live free, or we WILL die!" Dr. Pierre Kory, speaking at the Defeat the Mandates Rally in DC last Sunday.

Well I really, really wanted to attend the Defeat the Mandates Rally in DC last Sunday, but it just wasn't going to happen. So I did the next best thing, which was to watch all 3+ hours of it!

The event began at the Washington Monument, and the crowd processed across the mall to the Lincoln Memorial, carrying signs that read:

We don’t coparent with the government.
Where there is risk there must be choice.
The 70s called. They wanted to know what happened to their ‘Question Authority’ t-shirt.
Stop hating each other because you disagree.
Tuskegee 2.0
Jesus Saves.
Let’s go Brandon.
Let doctors be doctors.
We are the small ax.
My Body My Risk My Choice.
Fuck the NWO.
Liberty requires Jesus. James 1:25

Among many, many more. It sounds like about 30,000 came out; that's the only estimate that I read.  The weather was in the teens.

Before the speeches, Hi-Rez and Jimmy Levy performed three songs, including "Welcome to the Revolution," wearing t-shirts that read "No sheep in my circle."

This protest took place in conjunction with over a hundred anti-mandate rallies in cities throughout the world, including Mexico City, Hong Kong, Honolulu, and Dublin. This DC event had six sponsors and partnerships, including the FLCCC Alliance, Steve Kirsch's Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, and Awaken With JP Sears, who emceed the event.

"The crowd was perhaps the most politically diverse to have ever gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial," Daniel Cohen of Mint Press reported.  

It's hard to make generalizations about the speakers and participants. On Steve Bannon's Warroom, Dr. Malone said half of those on the dais considered themselves Democrat at one point. I saw MAGA hats in the crowds. The speakers included Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Hip-hop artist Hi-Rez communicated the same message of non-compliance as RFK Jr.

We’re not here to agree with each other, we’re here to function from love. Our event today is not about vaccine, anti-vaxxer, it’s not about Republican, Democrat, it’s not about one side or the other. That is stooping to a level that keeps us divided.

~JP Sears in his opening remarks

Watching Steve Bannon interview Steve Kirsch the morning of the rally was a bit of a mind fuck. Kirsch is a tech millionaire who has made sizable donations to the Democratic party, yet here is locking arms with the biggest Trump supporter of them all.

This diversity is consistent with Dr. Mattias Desmet's explanation of mass formation psychosis:

The group who defies the crowd, who does not go along with the narrative that leads to the mass formation is always very heterogeneous. It comes from all kinds of political backgrounds, all kinds of socio economic status, all kinds of professional backgrounds. It's very hard to define them, to find something that this group has in common.

The speeches at the Lincoln Memorial included the superstar doctors who've been so heroically outspoken these past 20 months, including Pierre Kory, Ryan Cole, Robert Malone and Peter McCullough. People injured by the vaccine spoke as well, followed by Steve Kirsch, RFK, religious leaders, and firefighters. Every speech was GREAT. Here are excerpts from some of my favorites.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RFK Jr. won the best dressed award, wearing a black wool coat over a suit and tie. He presented his speech entirely from memory, and is the only speaker who didn't speak from the podium. His speech was the longest by far—about fifteen minutes long. As you might expect, he covered the vaccines, particularly problems with the Pfizer vaccine trial. But I found the end of his speech the most powerful. (This begins at minutes 2:47.)

We have witnessed over the past twenty months a coup d'état against democracy; and the controlled demolition of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Starting with the censorship. James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson all said the same thing: We put freedom of speech in the First Amendment because all of the other rights that we were trying to protect relied on that right. If you give government the license to silence its critics, you have given them the capacity to commit any atrocity they want and to obliterate all the amendments and rights of the Constitution.

As soon as they got rid of freedom of speech they went after freedom of religion. They closed every church in this country for a year, with no regulatory process, no public hearing, no demonstration of science, no scientific citation to show it was going to do any good. They kept the liquor stores open as essential businesses. I remind you that liquor stores are not mentioned in the United States Constitution and Churches are.

They took away our property rights. They closed a million businesses with no due process and no just compensation.

They took away jury trials. The 7th Amendment says: “No American shall be deprived of a right to a trial before the jury of his peers in cases or controversies that exceed $25 in value.” There is nothing else, that's all it says. There's no pandemic exception, there's no war exception, there's no any exception.

We are watching something now that I never believed I would see in my lifetime....what we're seeing today is what I call turnkey totalitarianism.

It's been the ambition of every totalitarian state from the beginning of mankind to control every aspect of behavior, of conduct, of thought and to obliterate dissent. None of them have been able to do it.

Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide. Within five years we're going to see 415K low orbit satellites. Bill Gates says that his 65K satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet, 24 hours of the day. They're putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior, digital currency that will allow them to punish us from a distance and to cut off our food supply. 

Vaccine passports. (the crowd boos) You have a series of rights. As flawed as our government is, you can still go out and go to a bar. You can go to a sporting event, you can get on a bus or an airplane and you can travel...you have certain freedoms. You can get educated, etc.

The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent on your obedience to arbitrary government dictates. It will make you a slave!

And what do we do about this? We resist. I'm going to tell you three rules that you all need to know and memorize.

1. Every power that government takes from us, it will never relinquish voluntarily. They tell you: 'We just want you to lock down for two weeks to flatten the curve in the hospital' …even when they give up, close down, they are not relinquishing the power to do it to you again and again. They now have that power and they will never let it go until we make them let it go.

2. Every power they take from us they will ultimately abuse to the maximum extent possible.

3. Nobody in the history of the planet has ever complied their way out of totalitarian control. Every capitulation is a signal to the oppressors to impose new forms of torment or torture or compliance or obedience. Every time you comply, you get weaker. The hill that you're going to die on is the hill that you're on right now.

And they're coming for our children.

It sounds as though he's gone full-blown conspiracy with a few points here, except that what he's saying check out. Bill Gates has in fact invested in satellites to monitor ever square inch of the planet. And come to think of it, we did hand over all our rights twenty months ago—without much of a fight, I might add.

Dr. Tess Lawrie

Until now I'd only heard ABOUT Tess Lawrie, so I was so intrigued to finally hear FROM her. She is the UK doctor who produced the systematic review that found ivermectin effective in early treatment—a royal flush on the evidence based medicine pyramid! (Which unfortunately was ignored by hospitals throughout the US.)

Anyhoo, she seems to be quite a powerhouse on the medical scene and so I was surprised to hear such a sweet and calm voice coming across the screen. She wasn't physically present at the event (and I kind of wondered why she addressed a US crowd—did she also speak live at a protest in England?)

Her delivery was very calm and she used simple language, but I found it powerful.

The process of undermining the human spirit began a very long time ago. Disconnecting us from one another is key to controlling us. And when we forget who we are, when we disconnect from each other, we are easy game. So I remind you again, human beings are courageous and resilient.

Don't forget: What we do we do because we choose to do. We think because we choose to think. What we learn we learn because we choose to learn. And what we are we are because we choose to be.

Nobody should make us do, think, learn, or be anything we do not choose. We are responsible for ourselves because we are free. I am free, you are free. Remember?

It's time to step away from fear, starting today. This is reality. The opportunity for real change has arrived.

We will no longer tolerate interference in our rights and and our choices. We will say, 'No thank you.' We remember what is good for us. There is a better way, and we are creating it together. We will take it from here. We are one.

Her presentation demonstrated that resistance can be docile and sweet, yet still be a force to be reckoned with. 

Kyle Warner

It's so hard to listen to people who've been injured from the vaccines. So many have stories of visiting doctor after doctor who refuse to connect the dots between the vaccine and their debilitating injury. Their entire lifestyles are upended from something they were told was safe, and the vaccine companies have zero liability! They're completely ignored by the same agencies who de facto mandated they receive the vaccine.

Here is an excerpt from a speech given by Kyle Warner, a former mountain biker who developed pericarditis from the Pfizer vaccine:

The last year has been rough to say the least...in June of 2021, after being promised that the covid19 vaccines were the tested safe and effective solution to the pandemic, I was seriously injured by my second dose of Pfizer....As a professional athlete, this came out of nowhere. I'd spend the last decade relying on my heart and my body as my primary source of income. I was so used to it always working, exercise was my outlet, racing bikes my job. I took that for granted, and in an instant I went from winning mountain bike races to being completely bedridden. The last seven months have been a revolving door of doctors, hospital and cardiology visits. I've been unable to work and have spent tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket in hope of getting my old life back....I kept being told my injury was extremely rare and drew the short straw.

The team of injured people at React19 saw my story and reached out. They offered me ideas for possible treatment and things that helped ease their pain. They said we currently have over 5K members. I couldn't believe it: how had I not heard about these injuries before getting my shot? How were corporate media and public health officials still insisting that covid 19 vaccines are completely safe and effective if there's thousands of injured Americans in ONE online support group? It made no sense to me.

Warner presented this in good spirits, and oftentimes had a smile on his face, but nevertheless it was heartbreaking to hear. I would be so pissed if I were in his situation.

So that's a sampling from some of my favorites. But it's really hard to pare down the list, there were so many good ones.

The Critics

To no one's surprise, this event was largely smeared and dismissed by the MSM as crazy, unhinged, conspiratorial and dangerous—using pretty abysmal arguments.

They suggested that gathering to exercise First Amendment Rights is extremely dangerous and irresponsible when there's a really bad cold going around. This danger, however, doesn't apply with protests against racial injustice—in those instances alone, gathering together is safe and even laudable.

S.E. Cupp panned RFK Jr. with this word salad on CNN:

You can’t deal with the argument on its merits because it’s bonkers. It is also really embarrassing. That's ugly, ignorant stuff....he spends his days posting memes of Bill Gates as Dr. Evil. He's an incredibly educated person and someone who would bring a lot of credibility to a lot of these idiotic conspiracy theories, baseless conspiracy theories from one of America's favorite families. That's ugly, ignorant stuff.

Bring credibility to idiotic conspiracy theories from one of America's favorite families? What does that even mean?

And an editorial from the WA Post entitled “Vaccine Doubters Deserve Answers Not Dangerous Lies” claims that Dr. Malone is “leading his followers on a journey to illness, suffering and possible death.” The article goes on to acknowledge that the vaccines cause injury and death, and that their effectiveness is only temporary.

The ONLY direct criticism both the Post and CNN levied at RFK Jr. had to do with a reference he made to people escaping totalitarianism under the Nazi regime. Neither of them touched the meat of his presentation: the incriminating Pfizer vaccine trial data, in which all-cause mortality was higher in the vaccine group than the placebo group! 

Just the Beginning...

It was so encouraging to see the strong turnout and listen diverse, intelligent speeches.

It felt like a significant step in the Great Awakening. 

Did you listen to any of the rally speeches? What stood out to you? Have you seen any public protests to the mandates in your community?

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Hurling Stones at Our Goliath

Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken. 

~Ecclesiastes 4:12

You might need somethin' to hold on to
When all the answers they don't amount to much
Somebody that you can just talk to
And a little of that human touch.

~Bruce Springsteen

🍃

One evening around fifteen years ago, I stopped into a co-op with a friend of mine. We were either coming from somewhere, or heading somewhere, I do not recall, but somehow it made sense for us to stop there for dinner. I don't remember the name of the place, but it was kind of like a local version of Wholefoods. Smaller, more personal.

“The expensive grocery store,” is essentially how I regarded it. The place I would stop in on occasion for a chocolate bar or something as I headed to the more affordable Trader Joe's just down the street.

He and I had met a few years earlier at Blessed Sacrament, a Dominican Parish in North Seattle, and together, over the next few years, exhausted nearly every Catholic opportunity in town. We attended a weekly rosary group out of St. Joseph's Parish on Capitol Hill, went to retreats at the Carmelite Institute of Spirituality in Stanwood, attended the novena to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel at the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Shoreline, and sometimes on Sundays even hit up the Tridentine Mass at the Josephinum in downtown Seattle. We were bonafide Catholic junkies.

I didn't have a car, so he always drove. Sometimes, when he was dropping me off, he'd give me a gallon of triple filtered water he'd picked up at the co-op near his basement apartment in Greenwood. It tasted so pure and clean that I developed a habit of triple-filtering my water ever since. He was a gardener, and in the spring he'd drive me over to see his place, where he'd cultivated beds of beautiful, multi-colored dahlias.

He loved all sorts of chaplets. The rosary was central, and the Divine Mercy Chaplet as well, but also more obscure ones like the Chaplet to St. Joseph, with 15 sections of four beads, used to meditate on the virtues of this oft-overlooked saint. And he regularly participated in Father Gobbi's Cenacles from the Marian Movement of Priests. But his spirituality wasn't confined to the scope of the Magisterium. 

“You're hard to read,” he'd explained to me once. “Because you're a libra.”

There was nothing memorable about that particular evening. It was pretty ordinary. The two of us sat in the dining area eating soup and bread, chatting about this and who knows what else, on the way to our next engagement. It only stands out due to a passing comment he made as we were getting ready to leave. 

“The Blessed Virgin is behind this movement of co-op grocery stores.”

“What?” I started, as I looked at the patrons milling past, women in Lululemon leggings heading back to their multi-million dollar Capitol Hill homes. “Behind this lair of the ultra-affluent?”

I imagined the BVM would get her pom-poms out for people praying rosaries outside of Planned Parenthood, or for those who passed out sandwiches to displaced men at the St. Martin de Poors shelter on the waterfront.

But supporting a co-op that drew throngs of smarter-than-Jesus, more-money-than-God Seattle liberals?

“Pshaw,” I muttered under my breath. “I find that hard to believe.”

🍃

But I have mulled on his comment over the years.

Currently, I live in a town where the main street is comprised of stores chock full of tchotchkes, artisan salts, puzzles and soy candles. The Rite Aid exclusively sells candy, hair products and alcohol. The owner of the nearest mall, twenty miles away, stopped paying on his loan about a year ago, and the mall just sold at a foreclosure auction to the bank who held the mortgage. The bank is uncertain what it plans to do with it.

Twenty years ago, this same main street had a drug store, an office supply store, a hardware store, and two auto part stores. The Rite Aid sold everything. The mall was the county's retail pit stop, were everyone shopped for shoes, clothing and electronics, and afterwards dined on pizza and Orange Julius' at a busy food court.

Now, the covid pandemic has really eviscerated the soul from this community. We traditionally have a Fourth of July celebration with a parade, food vendors, artisan booths and a street party the night before. And every year, the Rotary Club sponsors an auction that the entire community comes out for, aka a junk fest where everyone donates their storage overflow, only to find other things to replace it with. Both have been canceled for the past two years.

We conduct our everyday lives, rather, between the big big box stores and the internet. The monoliths have brought us to their logical conclusion: local retail has shut its doors and we all flock to Walmart or Amazon for amHAZingly affordable this and that. Workplaces have transitioned to remote or hybrid models, and nearly half of those born after 1980 say they'd quit their job if remote work isn't an option. Given the great resignation of 2021, this probably isn't just talk. Our social lives are conducted via video conference platforms, or highly addictive social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. (I once taught a student who said she'd spend up to 7 hours on Instagram on Saturdays!)

And, while most of us remain at least superficially abreast of the national political scene, we are largely unaware of politics at the city and county level.

I'm as party to this trend as the next person. When I need something, I go to eBay, where my last ten purchases include: vitamins, books, a sleeping bag, camping gear, a brush, shoes, a hair clip, and Christmas gifts. Had I set my mind to it, I could have found nearly all these things within 15 miles of my home. Instead, they came from California, Texas, Oregon, Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Carolina and China. This past week, some of my most meaningful and emotionally charged interactions took place via the internet. I embarrassed myself on a Zoom call, confronted some annoying coworkers on Slack, got into it with people on Substack, was touched by a thoughtful podcast, and caught up with friends on FB Messenger. My work is completely virtual; for the past several months I've received a paycheck from someone I've never even spoken to, and have only interacted with via email and Slack.

And politically, outside of a sex scandal on the city council, I'm largely unaware of anything that's happening locally—and have no idea where to start if I ever wanted to get involved.

Covid certainly has accelerated this phenomenon of an everyday online existence. And so perhaps we'll see this trend decrease once we're through this pandemic.

Or perhaps not. Many of these changes are irreversible. Now that companies have remote systems in place, they're far more likely to recruit from anywhere and everywhere, making water cooler chats with coworkers a thing of the past. And those of us who have utilized Amazon to see us through the pandemic are unlikely to break from this highly-convenient habit where, with the click of a button, an array of goods, from water bottles to books to windshield wipers, shows up at our doorstep.

Economically, this shift has been seismic. Check out this tweet from over a year ago:

Wealth increase in the pandemic for founder/CEOs of
Amazon: $91 billion
Walmart: $38B
Google: $37B
Microsoft: $33B
Facebook: $28B
Nike: $8B
Apple: $8B

Small businesses: collectively lost over $200 billion

We're witnessing a record wealth transfer

— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) November 19, 2020

The situation has only accelerated since then.

Perhaps I'd be remiss at this point if I didn't cite “Bowling Alone, America's Declining Social Capital,” the decades-old article wherein author Robert Putnam concludes that citizens just aren't civically involved like they used to be. 

This notion of a dear hometown has been dying for some time now. There's no more trolly going through front park with a vendor selling a special tomato stew using ingredients and a recipe local to the area. The county fair, the bustling front street, the customs that bring communities together; these sort of things just aren't anymore. The covid pandemic, perhaps, has served as the death rattle.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

According to someone like Dave Ramsey, the Christian financial guru out of Tennessee, a true disciple of Jesus is some sort of a good old boy looking to do right by his wife, his children, his community. He's playing by all the rules. He lives in a home with at least 3 bathrooms, he's paid off a mortgage, he contributes to a 401K and budgets everything else. And, par for the course, he's got so much stuff he needs to rent out a storage unit to contain it all.

It's sort of a conflation of Christianity with the materialistic aspirations of middle class America.

But when I look at Scripture, I see a different story.

The Holy Family is radically detached from their home and possessions. At God's beckon, they up and leave their home in the middle of the night and make off to a foreign land (Matthew 2:13-4). During his three years of public ministry, Jesus didn't have much of a home or livelihood to speak of. As he says in Luke 9:58:

Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head. 

And Paul, the apostle par excellence to whom we owe 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament, had a sort of hand-to-mouth existence throughout his missionary journeys, tent making when he really needed the money, but preaching exclusively when he could swing it (Acts 18:3-5).

I'm more inclined to think that when we encounter Jesus today, he's the very person Ramsey lives and breathes to fix and improve. With his “cash is king, destroy your credit card” commandments, Ramsey would love to get him onto the phone and tell him to get real about the facts of life.

He's certainly no one Ramsey would genuflect before.

🍃

Right around my 30th birthday, Jesus said something to me in a dream, and I remember he gave off an ultra hippie vibe. He felt like a person you'd come across in that certain sort of really exaggerated co-op, the kind you'd find in a place like SE Portland, that has dirt floors strewn with granola, and a few rats living in the store rooms. And he'd show up either barefoot or in Birkenstocks, looking like he hadn't bathed for a week or more.

I started and went, “Oh, that's Jesus?!”

🍃

The Catholic Church speaks at length on the concept of subsidiarity. Of it, the Catechism states:

Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the church has elaborated on the principle of subsidiarity, according to which 'a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its function, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.' (1883)

Ok, so what does all that mean? 

If you can buy food grown at your neighbor's farm, you buy it there. Or you grow it yourself. If someone in your community fixes shoes, that's where you take them to be fixed. If the auto part store down the street has the piece for your broken headlights, that's where you purchase it. If the city wants a new park, it uses municipal taxes to build it. You look to a larger community, or another country, only when that good or service cannot be provided by your own. 

The consequence of tampering with this system; excessive state intervention; leaves people stymied. They feel no incentive to develop talent or initiate creative endeavors.

Putnam corroborates this assertion in “Bowling Alone,” where back in the 90s he wrote: 

With regard to the post communist countries, scholars and democratic activists alike have lamented the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive reliance on the state. ¹

And so my friend really was onto something. The BVM is behind a movement of supporting local, interacting local, being local. This ethos of the co-op grocery store; buying only what you need (or less) from local suppliers, living simply, and composting your waste; really IS at the heart of Catholic teaching. It's closely related to the way Jesus lived his life.

Easing the Totalitarian Grip

In the past two years, we've seen totalitarianism spreading across the entire world with alarming ease. It feels like a tidal wave. We see it coming, acknowledge the horror of it, but there seems to be no way to hold back the deluge.

I'm sensing a desperation, both in myself and in comments I've seen online.

“How do we stop this?” one commenter wrote in response to Steve Kirsch's January 15th article that covered Germany’s threat to cancel Telegram, the Washington State health board meeting that discussed putting unvaccinated into detention camps, and the Washington DC requirement of vaccine passports to use a public bathroom. 

Much of the discussion is focused around the delusion and inhumanity that's taking place. 

“They're killing us with propaganda!” Dr. Pierre Kory said at the Defeat the Mandates Rally in DC on January 23rd. 

How could people be so stupid as to believe the nonsense that masks are effective, that ivermectin is for horses, that it's perfectly OK for everyone to be injected with an experimental vaccine--and abhorrent that someone might refuse it? What's wrong with their brains? How do we wake them up?

How could the government ignore the hundreds of studies that show OTC drugs are effective in treating covid, or the hundreds of thousands injured from the vaccine? Who's really behind the dissemination of this propaganda that's led to the death of millions? And which are the useful idiots playing along?

Who's really part of the opposition that’s speaking out against the inhumanity, and who is the controlled opposition?

🍃

Another discussion that needs to be had centers around the question: How could all this have happened with so much ease? 

How did communities march in lockstep to the lockdown mandates, forcing their small businesses and churches to shut their doors, many of them never to reopen again, while places like Best Buy and Walmart never missed a beat, staying open throughout the pandemic? 

I hearken back to Putnam's article for the answer. Our communities were already weak. Twenty five years ago he wrote:

By almost every measure, Americans' direct engagement in politics and government has fallen steadily and sharply over the last generation...every year over the last decade or two, millions more have withdrawn from the affairs of their communities. ¹ 

And now, with the addition of smartphones, social media, and streaming services to our lifestyle, the problem has snowballed. First and foremost, we're “screen people” these days. Things like visiting with our neighbors, voting in local elections, attending political rallies or town halls, volunteering at civic clubs and participating in our churches happen when we find the time.

And with covid, society has taken a most insidious turn. Here’s Dr. Aaron Kheriaty’s assessment, from the January 23rd rally: 

Our ruling class has seen in covid an opportunity to revolutionize society. Recall how the phrase “the new normal” emerged almost immediately in the very first weeks of the pandemic. Asymptomatic spread turned every fellow citizen into a potential threat to my existence. It would be hard to find a better method to destroy the fabric of society and to divide us…People who are afraid of everyone, who are locked down, who are isolated for months or years behind screens are easier to control. A society grounded in social distancing is a kind of anti-society.

How might a scenario like this pandemic have played out, say, in the 1950s, before the digital age? In the face of mandatory lockdowns, it seems far more likely these communities, rich in social capital, would have banded together and said: “Hell no, you're not going to destroy the fabric of our town!”

🍃

In Luke 17:21, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is in our midst. It can be realized in the present moment, in what is right around us. 

And a key means towards realizing the kingdom, I'd propose, is embracing this principle of subsidiarity: invigorating our communities with localism, making in-person connections a way of life, socializing with neighbors, seeking employment in the area, participating in local politics and purchasing from nearby stores.

🍃

Recently I bought a car from a guy who told me outright he preferred me over another offer because I lived down the street, and the other person was coming from far away. He hadn't know me from Adam, but the simple fact that I lived a mile from him meant he liked me better.

“What's the difference?” one might wonder.

I can't put my finger on it exactly, and maybe that's a topic for another day, but there's something about physical connection that's really, really strong.

But do I really mean to suggest that we can slay this worldwide totalitarian Goliath, who for centuries has been “moving its slow thighs” toward this ultimate conquest, simply by meeting with friends for coffee, participating in local elections, checking in on neighbors and purchasing from nearby stores?

The answer is: “Yes, I do.” It's high time we step away from our screens and reach out into our communities to touch someone.

But enough of answering hypothetical questions.

What about you? What's your relationship to your community? Do you perceive that the internet or virtual interaction has reduced the quality of your local experience?

1 "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Robert Putnam, 1995.^↩

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Here's My “Red-Pilled” Story (What's Yours?)

I've been noticing on both Substack and Telegram an interest in sharing stories as to how we became red-pilled regarding this pandemic sham.

So I thought I'd share my story regarding why I decided not to get vaccinated, and how I was woken up to the “Big Lie.” This is a compilation of edited comments that I posted elsewhere.

Deciding Not to Get Vaccinated

I prayed about getting vaccinated in December of 2020, during a novena to the Immaculate Conception. The vaccines hadn't rolled out yet, but I could see there'd be immense social pressure to get one. I was unsure about them, but figured I'd capitulate, and told the BVM as much.

A few days after the novena, I had a dream where a voice said that I needed to be committed to not getting the vaccine.

It wasn't clear who spoke these words, but given that I'd just prayed about this issue, and given that the message was so coherent (and it was opposite to the decision I'd made myself), I decided that it came from God, or one of his messengers, and that I needed to listen to it.

And so I became firmly committed to not getting vaccinated, but I didn't have much of a reason other than “I think God doesn’t want me to and I don’t have a good feeling about it anyway.”

Waking Up to the Big Lie

Fast forward to about nine months later, when the vaccines had pretty much entirely rolled out, and anyone who wanted one of these safe and free and experimental mRNA vaccines could get one.

One totally random weekday, seemingly out of nowhere, my sister sent me a text saying that she'd heard I wasn't going to get vaccinated. I responded by saying that yes, she'd heard correctly, and that I didn't consider it to be any of her business, really.

That was enough to set her off. She responded with an IRATE, NASTY text in which she informed me I was irrational, dangerous to the elderly, too stupid to figure anything out, and should be ashamed of myself.

I was pretty stunned at her response. It felt almost like a physical attack, and I realized that I needed support to back up my decision. So I reached out to friends who weren’t getting vaccinated, and they sent me videos of Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko and Dr. Bhakdi Sucharit. I kind of went down the rabbit hole after this, eventually discovering Steve Kirsch on the Dark Horse Podcast with Dr. Weinstein and Dr. Malone.

A penny dropped after I listened to Peter McCullough testify before the Texas senate on March 10th (I listened to it about five months later). He pointed out what a massive failure it was that we didn't a covid hotlines, and that rather, when people tested positive for covid, they were basically told to go home and incubate. I realized how odd that was, given our "all-in" fight to protect ourselves from covid.

Then I listened to Dr. Zelenko recount his experience back at the beginning of the pandemic in Orange County, New York (he was speaking to Israeli Health Ministers). He made the simple point that a doctor always has to ask if something is safe, if it's necessary, and if it's effective before prescribing it to a patient. The vaccine is a "no" to all of these questions.

Finally, after listening to Steve Kirsch on Trial Site News, I was 100% convinced this whole scenario was utterly fantastic. Kirsch pointed out how we're completely ignoring scientific method and protocol: the vaccine has no stopping conditions, even though it's experimental, we have systematic reviews that ivermectin works for treating covid (and so there's no reason for hospitals not to prescribe it), there's no double-blind randomized control trials that show we should wear masks, or that someone who's already had covid should get the vaccine, yet we're told to “follow the science” and do it anyway.

He explained VAERS, and how easy it is to read about vaccine deaths and injuries, and I saw how dangerous the vaccines really are. 

He also showed the www.c19early.com site, which lists all the repurposed drug studies done on covid patients. I realized that covid could be treated with over the counter drugs and vitamins! A mind-blowing realization. I now have quercetin, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin C & D in my cupboard. They cost about $60 total. 

Summing It Up

So there's my story, pretty much. I suppose it's probably much more complicated than this. Stories are simplifications, right? I mean, I’m 100% convinced that someone else watching those same videos wouldn’t have the epiphanies I had.

Maybe I should point out that I didn't trust the government much to begin with. I've known for years that their explanations for 9-11 and the JFK assassination were lies. So I kind of suspected that this pandemic was another of their whoppers, and I was just needing someone to fill in the details. Which these videos did. 

And looking back now, I see that my sister laying into me was like a frying pan hitting me across the head and forcing me to WAKE UP. She's normally a nice enough person, with decent social skills, and I saw that she'd been really, really radicalized. Some force had poured kerosine onto her anger and set it on fire. That made me go, “aw shit, something's really going ON here. This behavior isn't normal.”

So even though she was unhinged and mean as hell, it was probably a graced moment for me. She served as the catalyst for all of my Bitchute/Substack deep dives. Those started just over four months ago, and I'm AMAZED at all of the information I've ingested since then! I’m way more intellectually opposed to the vaccine than I was a year ago.

What's Your Story?

And that's my story.....what about yours? Are you opposed to this vaccine and the mandates and all the fear-porn they're dumping onto us? If so, what woke you up?

Or do you have another take entirely?

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