Covid-19: Yup, I'm Questioning the Legitimacy of the Conventional Narrative
If you have been following any of my writing in the last few years you already know: There is only one voice I wholeheartedly trust to tell me the truth I seek in the moment. That is, my internal voice of wisdom. That voice of wisdom that when I allow it to come through, has never failed me. That intuitive voice protects me, as it always has, from the poisons of the external world. I did not know to trust it in the past, conditioning teaches us to consistently second guess it and deny ourselves it's truth, but through a lot of integrating, digesting and metabolizing my history and cultural conditioning, I have come to a space where I trust wholly only that voice. The voice of divine wisdom.
When it comes to Covid-19, that voice of wisdom tells me that the conventional narrative is inherently untrustworthy and full of countless contradictions. The loudest voices on conventional media AND conspiracy theory channels only spew messages of fear, hatred and shame. We are now experiencing polarization in narratives, and therefore ideologies, like never before. People all around me keep talking in binaries -- Trump or Biden; Fox News or CNN; black or white. Stagnated in the moment; ignoring entirely the bigger picture, the larger context. In an effort to believe someone out there will solve a small, temporary-yet-perpetually-present problem, the collective "we" have surrendered our mind to sociopathic people and institutions who historically and continuously blatantly lie, shamelessly manipulate, and purposefully perpetuate division. So while the herd blindly stampedes toward anything that will allow them to go "back to normal", even though that will never be the case again (are you paying attention?), I seek to explore a different context for contextualizing the narrative around Covid-19.
The notion of "Divide and Conquer" comes to mind.
The most dangerous bit about this so-called pandemic is not the mass hysteria and fear it is creating, nor the questions around the health concerns arising from the rushed never-used-before nano-technology "savior" (aka THE vaccine). It isn't even the obvious shifts toward an increasingly totalitarian, monopolized, fascist, censored technocratic society. Instead, it is the fact that in our current polarized either status-quo narrative OR conspiracy-theory narrative we have effectively shut down the avenues for constructive conversation, for much needed expansive discourse on an issue that is proclaimed to be "new" to everyone involved (scientists, politicians, doctors, techies).
In my own personal experience, if anyone so much as dares to question out loud the conventional narrative they are quickly labelled and dismissed as a Trump-supporting conspiracy-theorist right-wing antivaxer. Well, I am none of those things, and I absolutely, unequivocally and unapologetically question the conventional narrative of this so-called pandemic.
I dare to question the conventional narrative not because I have a Master's degree in Criminology that actually delved into who gets voice in the media, nor because I have obsessively studied corporate crime and the interplay between corporations and governments in creating culture and laws that coincidentally continuously benefit the "haves". This is not what attunes me to what's unfolding before our very eyes. What actually does is the fact that I am a totalitarian government survivor with a finely attuned antenna to even the subtlest forms of state/government, institutional and corporate overstepping or violations. I have lived it, personally and epigenetically. Every cell in my body responds to this shit.
My experiences with questioning, rather than blindly trusting, authority and the conventional narrative (you know, what eventually comes to be known as propaganda) have been shaped from a very early start. I was born in Communist Albania, 1987. Until his death in 1985, a man called Enver Hoxha violently ruled the country for forty treacherous years with the brute force that comes with claiming absolute power over. In the political climate I was born into if anyone dared to vocalize out loud a simple fact that could be perceived as a threat to the state, they, along with their family, would face dire consequences (like, torture, prison, sudden disappearance and all that kind of stuff most of us think only happens in the movies). My family, on both parental sides, has experienced a countless state-violations first-hand. While it is my intention to one day delve into my family's history with totalitarianism and refugee stories, for now, it is noteworthy to simply point out that the vibrations of the dangers associated with questioning authority live epigenetically in my body.
Despite the perceived dangers, I have never been one to back down from discovery and curiosity. Even as a young child I understood that although questioning authority out loud was dangerous, I never stopped questioning within myself. Of course, the answers I'd come up with were perpetually unsatisfactory, and so I learned to internalize contradictions in my body as the norm. I lived most of my life pissed off. This roaring rage within me led to the path of activism and wanting desperately to find solutions to the world's destructive problems. Turns out, you can't solve a problem within the same paradigm that created it. Now that I know better, I'm living my life from a different paradigm altogether. One that acknowledges the totality of what we are. Within this mind-frame, I know: when I sense that fire I used to label "rage", I know it is here to get me to pay attention.
When the pandemic started, I actively avoided most narratives around it for many, many months. I was a new mother with loads on my plate. I had decided that I didn't know who/what narrative to trust, didn't want to know, and was comfortable in my not-knowing. When not knowing became not enough, I decided to expand my knowledge of what's going on and listen to a variety of interviews whose voices were not included in the conventional media. This interview with Rocco Galati was noteworthy because, while all he is talking about how he is suing the Government of Canada for breach of Constitutional rights, within moments of the video going live on air both Facebook and Instagram booted the interview out of the livestream. According to the social media algorithms, Canadians must be censored (protected?) from hearing about this lawsuit. Censorship at its finest.
Because there are no accidents in the universe, that very same afternoon one of our neighbors called the police on us to report a "gathering" consisting of our family of three and my father in law (who, by the way, lives alone with his dog). Apparently, the new (ever-changing) rule at that time was that noone was allowed to mix households. One of us can check on him in his house but he cannot visit us in ours! He must remain locked-in in his own home (except to go shopping, of course). New rules every day, justified by the uncontextualized numbers thrown at us that serve to breed mass hysteria and fear. What I think is noteworthy here is that the propaganda (the fear instilled around the perceived dangers of this virus along with the deep cultural conditioning to comply with the ever changing rules) is so powerful and prevalent that neighbors are now literally spying on one another and calling the state to intervene in family affairs. All this social degradation in the name of "good citizenship", "health" and "safety".
After this incident occured I posted about it on Facebook and was pleasantly surprised to see just how many people are fed up with the conventional contradictory messages. Here's what I wrote:
Today our neighbors called the POLICE on us to report a "gathering" consisting of us (both of whom stay at home) and, get this, our father (who by the way, lives alone with his dog). He was literally kicked out of our house; but at least we didn't get a fine. We were told our kid can visit him, and only one of us. I mean, it's not like we'll send our eight month old baby alone to his house, is it?! So, one of us can visit him, but he cannot visit us. He must stay prisoner in his home. After all, we are in the so-called red zone.
The propaganda is so powerful that neighbors are now literally spying on one another, calling the state to intervene in family affairs, all in the name of "health" and "safety".
I, for one, completely fail to comprehend just how I am healthy(er) or safe(r) if I am completely isolated, even from my immediate family.
Can't rollerblade with my kids outside, yet I can take my kids to school and daycare. I can't have my father visit his grandchild, yet I must go to the office daily to work. I can't visit the small mom and pop shops, yet Walmart is an essential service. The contradictions are uncanny. Who is paying attention?
You see ....Total and complete isolation is the key to health, nowdays. Deprivation of being with loved ones, that is now equated with health. Deprivation of human contact of any kind, health. Sanitizing, health. Isolation, health. Distancing, health. Lockdown, health. Fear, health.
Today is one story, tomorrow, a whole nother.
And the institution of policing? As always, they are just looking out for the greater good, is all. I did feel bad for the officer who was here --she clearly did not want to be doing what she had been mandated to do. I can confidently assume this is NOT why she joined the police force...
I have a lot of thoughts emerging as a result of this experience that have propelled me in a direction that differs from the conventional.
Perhaps having lived through a totalitarian regime (communist Albania) has sensitized me to violations of the state; and living in a neo-liberal capitalist America has sensitized me to violations of the corporate oligarchs. I know, too, these two operate hand in hand, they have for eons. The management of this pandemic is in the hands of sociopaths, oligarchs, and genocidal maniacs.
Anyone questioning the conventional narrative is shut down and shamed/shunned for speaking out. Crazy, right-winger, flat-earther. Any questions, dismissed. Irrelevant. Confusing. A basic founding principle of democracy, violated and enforced by ideology so deeply engrained, most fail to even look, never mind question.
I'm not necessarily suggesting to not listen to the leading authorities (though I trust the truth presenting in my body much more than the loudest voice out there); I am simply pointing to the utility of questioning the process of how "truth" emerges and solidifies. Who are the silenced voices? Who gets to decide the legitimacy of a claim? Who gets to question it? Who gets included, and who gets left out? Who is advising politicians how to act? Who stands to benefit from keeping fear engraved in our DNA?
Who benefits from keeping my father away from his family, from the pure joy of visiting his fucking grandchild...?
*PS - I'm not posting this to provoke an argument; I'm posting my POV based on my personal experience that is shaping my emerging perspective.
The question for me now is: How much more of the intolerable will the collective choose to endure? I am inclined to believe a heck of a lot more. It is quite evident that our collective tolerance, our willingness and ability to endure the intolerable, is exponential. We will do as we're told; we will follow the inhumane rules; we will spy on anyone and everyone who isn't in compliance; we will ingest in our bodies this unprecedented vaccine that apparently prevents even mutated future forms of the virus. We will comply, desperately hoping life finally goes "back to normal".
Anyone conscious these past few months who still believes that the world will, one day soon, "return to normal", I believe has not been paying enough attention to what's going on. From where I stand, there is a global shift unfolding; a great pressure to comply and surrender, increasingly more, to the external directives of the conventional, "legitimate" sources directed by the modern day god & savior, science. As if we need to give more of our minds away to technology/science/experts/governments/corporations! (Still, we all know why the commercial industry is a billion dollar industry.) We are in the process of being herded into a mindset that is increasing our capacity for capitulation. If we are not paying attention, if we blindly continue to fearfully comply, we risk surrendering our minds even more to people and institutions who have historically royally fucked us. They will take everything, including our very humanity.
In my own life, I already know that personal power comes only from our willingness and ability to expand our mindset, to engage and contemplate perspectives other than those which we can readily and easily repeat to ourselves. In the last few months I've engaged in conversations that have expanded my ability to see this pandemic differently. I have heard from various sources (their legitimacy always and necessarily depends on how one chooses to evaluate it) and I have concluded, with conviction, that this so-called pandemic is an all out war on our minds and liberties. Who / what / when / where / why, I am unable to account for, nor does it matter for me to be able to know, within myself, MY Truth, in this moment.
I couldn't not ask: Have you heard of the Great Reset as per the World Economic Forum? The largest "partners" of the WEF being corporations openly aiming to change the way we live under the guise of "sustainability" and "health security". Personally I appreciate her take on this shift. Have you heard of the common-pass? It is the tool that will necessarily restrict our freedom of movement (and who knows what else!), particularly if we choose to not comply with the now almost-mandatory vaccinations. I'm sure you've heard about the restrictions Ontario is likely to put in place for those who are not vaccinated. Coercion guised as 'choice'.
Directive, however, does not equal compliance. Compliance is a choice. And every choice has consequences...
While I continue to basically feel like the more I learn the less I know about this pandemic (and life, more generally), I sense in my body that I know, for now, what the right choices are for me and those I am tasked with protecting. Every choice I make comes with it's own set of consequences, that's for sure. I know what I am willing to live with, and what I am not.
As it stands, I am unwilling to be complacent with the conventional narrative. I am unwilling to pretend I don't see what I see and hear what I hear, despite how detrimental the collective perceives it to be. I am unwilling to be a participant in the roll-out of increasingly more totalitarian regimes that blatantly coerce and manipulate with "legitimate" voices. I am unwilling to ignore the tight-knit symbiotic relationship between corporations (aka "persons") and governments that has historically sought to benefit the oligarchs that "have".
Quite simply, I am unwilling to pretend, to hide, to deny myself my truth.
So long as I have the freedom to choose, I am unreservedly unwilling to allow Pfizer and the likes to ingest my body (or my son's) with a proclaimed state-of-the-art-new-nano-technology magic potion that will save us from this global crisis. I can't claim to know everything about this particular vaccine, but I do know enough to know that it isn't for me. There are simply too many contradictions, too many unknowns, and worst of all -- too much coercion to comply. I wonder, too, who will be disproportionately hit with mandatory-type vaccinations? I'm willing to bet it's our Indigenous communities, vulnerable populations, and as always, the working poor. In any case, while this vaccine is continuously being promoted as our only saviour, there are countless voices of doctors (risking their careers) warning us otherwise. These voices though, are muzzled through a new-old form of mind control: censorship.
In a global pandemic where voices are not united in their perspective of what's actually going on, THE Truth (if there is such a thing) is a luxury but a handful of people possess. The only question for me becomes: whose truth do I trust?
What I know exceptionally well is that double speak and double think are real. When George Orwell wrote 1984 he did not write it to warn us of the obvious dangers of overt totalitarianism -- he wrote it to warn us about the dangers of the world we currently, obliviously live in. If you're paying attention you'd notice all the notions alive and well in the book are manifestations of our current world. Most of us are just not able to unplug from our mesmerizing screens to actually notice -- Big Brother has been watching.