A Day Trip To Another America

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars®, A New Hope

Well, at least they’re admitting it . . . (None of the memes today are originals – they are “as-found” on the Internet)

Pugsley is an athlete, and that causes us to have to go to places to see him engage in his sport (elk milking) across the state, and sometimes across state lines.  These are, for the most part, the only trips of any significance that we have taken in the last two years.  Pugsley, sadly, is old enough that I can’t skip the trip with him on his sports jaunts since he no longer buys my excuse.

What’s my excuse?  I’m adopted.  So, I tell him, “I can’t go because my parents won’t sign the permission slip.”  He doesn’t even giggle at that.  He’s got a cold heart.

Here in Modern Mayberry, masks have essentially disappeared from all public life.  The only place that might still require them is the local hospital, and thankfully I have no idea if they do or not.  We ate brunch today and, although many of the patrons at the restaurant were older folks, there wasn’t a single mask to be seen.  These are country folk.  They’re more afraid of bad weather for the crops than they are of a virus, and they feel that they can control the virus about as much as they can control the weather.

Everywhere our family has been across the state, it looks and feels like the same.   It looks a lot like the elk-milking competitions I went to when The Boy (Pugsley’s older brother) was in high school.  This was back before the Great Plague Of Overblown Impact hit us.  There are no masks, and people just behave like . . . well, nothing ever happened.

Late 2021 looks exactly like 2019 in my daily life.  We even shake hands when we meet people and we don’t act like we’ve just dipped our hands in some sort of biohazard, or have touched AOC’s teeth.  But I repeat myself.

The elk milking competition went well.  There were hundreds of people all inside for a day.  I coughed once, I think (nacho went down the wrong hole, and no, I’m not going to make that a joke about my nacho hole) and no one bothered to even look.  Here in Midwestia, we’re over it.  We’re not afraid.

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

The Boy has been off at college.  As finals were over, and Pugsley’s elk milking competition was near his college, The Boy came on to cheer his brother on.  Those elk milking siphons sure make a guy’s wrists tired.  After the competition was over, we decided to go and grab some food.  As we have exactly six restaurants in our usual rotation in Modern Mayberry, eating somewhere new is a treat.

The Boy asked his friends about good restaurants near where we were.

They were all in . . . Blue City.  Every Red State has a Blue City, where nose rings and “meat is murder” t-shirts outsell gasoline and beef jerky.  The friends came up with three names.  Two were burger joints, and the third was a Japanese place.

I’ll admit I was interested in eating Japanese.  At first, I had some pretty big resistance, until I explained it wasn’t Japanese people that we were going to eat, but Japanese food.  Then everyone agreed.  I guess it’s a matter of taste?

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

We got to Blue City.  Pugsley, fresh off of his second-place elk milking victory, was driving.

The first thing I noted was this:  in Modern Mayberry, if I want to go to a place, I can park near it.  In Blue City, in order to get to the Not At All Cannibal Where You Eat Japanese People Restaurant, we had to park over a quarter-mile away.

Honestly, the walk didn’t hurt me.  Nor did feeding the parking meter $1.50 to park to not eat Japanese people.  Nor did walking through the faceless, anonymous crowd.  But it wasn’t a pleasant walk.  It felt like walking in a street from some sort of dystopian movie, like Bladerunner®, filled with people who hordes of people I didn’t know or and who didn’t care about me on crowded streets.  It was like being in my house in the morning before anyone had any coffee.

Thankfully I didn’t have to fashion a cloak out of an abandoned tarp.  Or did I?

I came to a store that I wanted to go into.  I was about to open the door when I noticed the laminated sign on the clear glass door:  “No entrance without masks.  If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.”  The Mrs. quite succinctly mentioned where she thought they could stick their Internet, but I wondered if it would be uncomfortable for them to have so much CNN® up in that dark, moist place.  We left them in peace, and I hope they have a lot of dark, moist success.

We kept walking to the Restaurant That Definitely Doesn’t Serve Asian People As Food Because Of That Health Inspection, the foot traffic was continuous.  Many people were masked, though not all.  Finally, we got to our destination.  On the door was another sign, just like the first store, though they didn’t offer to ship cooked people over the Internet.

This immediately caught the ire of The Mrs., and since she’s at least a bit Irish, you don’t want to get the ire of an Irish lass too Irish.  Or something.  Let’s just say that she can have a bit of a temper that makes Belfast in 1972 look like a Care Bears® movie.  I looked inside the restaurant, though, and there were plenty of people not wearing masks.

They were mostly all eating, but they weren’t wearing masks.  Apparently, the virus doesn’t travel when you’re sitting and eating, only when you’re standing and ignoring the duct-tape crosses on the floor in the line.  When we first entered the restaurant, there was another person not eating and not wearing a mask.  Since he could get away with it, I figured we could, too.  As he was a people of color, I would have a jolly fun time making a YouTube® show if they kicked us out, and not him.

They ignored that we were unmasked heretics and were pleasant and served us.

Hey, that’s Internet me!

The restaurant really didn’t serve Japanese food, just ramen.  It was expensive ramen, since ramen with steak in it cost $14.50 a bowl.  They took our order, and we waited at our table.

We got the oddly shaped (14 inches wide and eight-foot long) table near the front.  The chairs were weirdly high and the restaurant smelled of . . . farts.  Really.  The ramen, though, was excellent.  Mine was filled with steak and mushrooms and was unexpectedly (and subtly) spicy.

I generally get the chair so I can see the entrance – The Mrs. is used to it.  We had gotten to the restaurant right before the rush – patrons that came in right after us were told that they could get a text when a table was available.  In Modern Mayberry, you can walk into the best restaurant in town and (generally) have no more than a zero-minute wait.  And a quarter block is a long walk to it.

But it wasn’t that which bothered me the most.

What I noticed were the patrons coming into the restaurant.  They all wore masks, even the young children.  I understand that there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread.  And nearly every person in the restaurant was at zero risk of serious complications from the ‘Rona.  The children were at zero risk.  Heck, I was nearly the oldest guy in there.

As everyone in the Wilder fam has had the ‘Rona, my fear level was zero.

Oh, money can’t buy love, but it can buy fear.

But what I saw wasn’t so much fear or even altruism in wearing the masks.  What I saw was subjugation in its nearly universal compliance.  Would I have put on a mask to eat a Japanese person bowl of ramen?  No.  I wouldn’t put on a mask to eat a nice steak bathed in PEZ® with Johnny Depp as he drank Amber Heard’s tears.

After dinner, I was struck by the differences in attitude between Blue City and Modern Mayberry.  I felt fear in Blue City that I never feel around here.  It’s not that the ‘Rona is done here – there are still 50 or so cases a week in the county.  But I get the sense that residents here are just done caring about it.

Of the people who have died in our county, I know exactly zero of them.  Zero.  And I know a lot of people around here.  As mentioned before, I’ve had some variation of COVID, as have The Mrs., Pugsley and The Boy.  From the data I’ve seen, that makes us functionally immune in a way better than (insert jab booster number here) can never achieve.  The virus itself will hopefully have zero additional physical impact on the Family Wilder.

Oh, wait.  They’re not done yet?

But what impact will baseless fear have on our lives?  Right now there is a threat that if we:

  • don’t take an mRNA shot that doesn’t work,
  • we won’t be able to work because we might be able to transmit a disease that we can’t get,
  • but that those who get the mRNA jab can get.
  • And those who get “jab” can also transmit.

Fear is the source of most Evil things that have plagued (intended) mankind.  At this point, the biggest shortage we have is a shortage of courage.  Stand strong.  I won’t suggest that you do or don’t do anything, but for me, the mRNA shot and its infinite number of iterations is a step too far.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

52 thoughts on “A Day Trip To Another America”

  1. I feel you on the “fear factor” in Blue City, brother: I live in a mostly-Blue State (when I’m not working on my new home in what’s left of America). I’m the oddball locally because I’m not afraid… of anything, really. Something to do with growing up having to watch my back constantly for half my life before I escaped the Hell of my upbringing. The key to surviving was learning to break free of fear, by facing the greatest fear (Death), and accepting it.

    After that, lesser fears didn’t affect me anymore… and with that detachment, I learned how the bullies and predators’ attempts to instill fear worked, and how to work it right back at them. And they disappeared, fast: never bothered me again, or anyone I cared about, as long as I was around. Jackals don’t hang around when lions show them eye…

    My lack of fear drives those who’ve bought into the fear absolutely crazy… makes them think that I’m crazy. Perhaps, but I’m acting a lot more rationally than they are. “The proof is in the pudding” and “You know a tree by its fruits.” I guess that if they start at the premise that they are rational, and rationalize their fear as normal, then anyone doing the opposite of what they do must be crazy.

    Back when I beat the bullies and predators, I learned that what I used to think of as “rational” people (including most of them) operate on a “risk vs. reward” calculus. Set the risk too high and the reward too low, they don’t do it. It seems that the risk that the fearful are afraid of is the risk of infection, or the risk of being ostracized socially by the other fearful people, and it’s not worth the potential reward of freedom?

    The worst of the lot are those who’ve convinced themselves that their fear is a sign of moral rightness; they consider me and those like me to be evil (and I wonder what kinds of Huxley-an “psychological luxury” they contemplate in regards to me). Still, like the other jackals, they slink away in my presence, and only indulge in fantasies of their crusade of righteous indignation when safely among like-minded fools.

    Very glad to have cut ties with them. I’m starting to realize the wisdom of what Heinlein was talking about when he said, “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” Personally, I’m with Linda, though I prefer trebuchets to wood chippers. A scientifically educational tool, for physics-deprived fools… Also, they are much tidier… except at the point of impact, of course!

    1. They are Mrs. Grundy (Heinlein version).

      I wonder (really) how pathetic it must be to feel that much fear and hate every day?

  2. If just ONE MORE Liberal Arts major tells me (retired science teacher) that I don’t understand ‘the Science’, there’s gonna be an unexplained ‘accident’ with a wood chipper.

  3. In nearby Fort Wayne you can go to some of the stores and still see some oddball wearing a mask. I kind of like it, it is a little more subtle than wearing a t-shirt that proclaims “I Am Retarded” but it is odd enough to see that it is noticeable. On the other hand most employees at these stores are forced to wear masks which makes them even more anonymous and part of the background than before. I guess it will make it easier to phase them out entirely for robots in the next 12-18 months. Each passing day seems to present a new fault line proving that we live in two different nations within the same political borders.

    1. Yup. Don’t miss the big cities. Traffic at rush hour here? Two cars at the stop light, which hardly ever happens.

  5. More evidence that how you view things greatly depends on where you’re at. Everybody around us wears holy face rags. Yet when I walk into a store unmasked I rarely get hassled, even by the masked. Smiling and reminding folks that we’re still humans helps. I really need to get a rabbit’s foot, and that way when someone freaks I can pull it out and say, “It’s okay; I have my holy rabbit’s foot! We’re all safe!”

    1. Where we are (think hillbilly Idaho) you rarely see anyone wearing a mask, the ones that are, are new refugees from the left coast. Hopefully they will eventually see the idiocy of their ways. My DW and myself have had a mild case of the crud, we had ivermectin, did the protocols, and viola…….all good.
      Lets Go Brandon! FJB!

      1. Where I live in the Spokane area, I can see Idaho (aka “freedom”) from my house (I’m like Sarah Palin, but far uglier… and male). If I could pack up and leave, I’d head 5 miles east but sadly, I’m too old to go through homesteading again (and, frankly, I love our house in the woods too much to consider it). The packing alone would probably kill me simply out of an overwhelming sense of futility when looking at all our crap.

        Thankfully, interstate travel is – for the time being – still allowed, so I do nearly all my purchasing in the Gem State, and any purchases I make in Washington are only in places that don’t force me to wear the face diaper. Most businesses at this point would rather simply engage in commerce, and not be nanny’s for the State.

    2. We filled out a survey at school. I pulled no punches, called it a cargo cult. The school board dropped the mandate. Sure, it might prevent a few cases, but those cases would be in . . . 16 year olds, who have bones of adamantium and are nigh-invulnerable to this stuff.

    1. 80% miscarriage rate among vaccinated women?
      And that doesn’t even count the tenfold increase in stillbirths and failures to thrive.

  7. “Maskholes!!!”

    John, I have been an expert defense witness in IAQ lawsuits & conducted >1,000+ IAQ investigations over the last 20+ years. Know a little bit about this whole scamdemic.

    Masks are not just useless…they’re UNHEALTHY – decreased O2, increased CO2, foster microbial growth. Not to mention the psych problems, esp. to younguns’. I made my mold remediation crews change their N95 masks HOURLY, no exceptions.

    Amazingly, “Blue” people put their trust in an old fart w/ a 2″ pecker that hasn’t practiced medicine since the 1980s, when he advocated AZT that murdered God knows how many AIDS patients.

    He’s the REAL maskhole.

    1. Masks make me sweat. I’ve got to dump heat, since my body is an amazingly efficient chemical reactor. Better idea? Make everyone eat garlic and onions. Nobody wants to be around that.

    2. Nothing shows that gen pop masking slows the spread of viral transmission. Both large cohort studies I’ve seen show no benefit. Denmark and… India, I think?

      The viral transmission prevention is for a limited time frame for an individual using a real, fitted, properly construced mask as part of biohazard PPE.

      Sure fully functional boats and bridges enable people to cross rivers, and studies show that wood floats, and rowboats and canoes are great for fishing on the lake…

      But forcing everyone to cross rivers in a wooden rowboat with holes knocked in them is wicked foolishness.

      And that’s without the harm caused by getting enough people cowed and stupid enough to go along with such foolishness because they’re mostly using them on piddling creeks.

  8. I am a lifelong blue state resident who just recently relocated to a red one. But we are on the outskirts of a big blue city, whose madness spills out to our patch, sadly. Muzzles are worn by about half of the people I see out shopping, and far too many are dutifully donned by younger people.

    The real rebels, though? Old guys. White men my age and up, rocking the grizzled gray beard and obligatory beer-and-BBQ gut (still working on developing one, myself). Hypertensive heroes and a-fib aficionados who have a far, far greater chance of dying by this manufactured plague, yet who face life unmasked, unvaxxed and unafraid. It’s a new fraternity, and we nod acknowledgement to one another up and down the aisles at Buc-ee’s and Cabela’s.

    1. You’ve described me to a tee. It seems it falls to us to lead the way out of this insanity, we cantakerous old farts who just don’t give a shit anymore. See you at Cabela’s, brother.

    2. Eugene, Oregon… aka formerly ‘GoofballCentral’, now HiveCentral.
      Inside the city limits, I see half PureBloods and half hivers.
      Out in the county, hivers do not get waited on in the diner or feed-store.
      Simple to identify hivers — ashamed of part of their face, they hide the hideous monstrosity from public view.
      .
      In a grocery, Wal*Mart, our local-owned family-operated hardware store, I notice I linger.
      .
      I take a cart from the parking-lot corral — sterilized by sunlight — and slowly stroll every aisle.
      I might make the circuit twice, smiling and nodding to PureBloods, scowling the cold-shoulder to hivers.
      .
      Do you think it wrong of me to shun hive-members?
      Do you think I am a terrible person because I have no wish to be infected with hive opinions?

      1. The Hive is demoralized. They can no longer understand the Truth. No amount of evidence will ever convert them. It is religion.

  9. Still more Science. September 8, 2021 JAMA Research Letter: Spontaneous Abortion Following COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2784193

    You should really download the PDF of this Research Letter and spend some time thinking about it. Maybe I’ve only got a degree from MIT instead of an MD, but still, I can run the numbers. Down in the Surveillance Periods area of Table 1, divide the raw number of Covid Vaxx Spontaneous Abortions by the raw number of Covid Vaxx Ongoing Pregnancies. Here’s what you get:

    12 2020 : 021 / 0711 = 0.030
    01 2021 : 068 / 1696 = 0.040
    02 2021 : 097 / 2322 = 0.042
    03 2021 : 204 / 4934 = 0.041
    04 2021 : 330 / 5654 = 0.058
    05 2021 : 272 / 3485 = 0.078
    06 2021 : 136 / 1337 = 0.102

    Sure looks to me like the number of spontaneous abortions per vaxxed pregnancy is increasing alarmingly with time.

    Even their own conclusion (adjusted odds ratio) is going as high as 1.29 for some of the models they are using, and all their models are “averaging out” to 1.07 to 1.08 for pregnancies over 9 weeks. That’s a 7% to 29% increase in spontaneous abortions among vaxxed pregnancies depending on what average or specific model they are using!

    I just don’t get it. “Science” isn’t SCIENCE anymore…

    1. Silly me, ranting about SCIENCE above and neglecting to present equivalent data from the control group of unvaxxed pregnant women:

      SPONT
      PREGS ABORT RATIO
      TOTAL NOVAX VAXED TOTAL NOVAX VAXED NOVAX VAXED
      36964 36253 0711 1767 1746 021 0.048 0.030
      36981 35285 1696 2097 2029 068 0.058 0.040
      37030 34708 2322 1871 1774 097 0.051 0.042
      37144 32210 4934 1903 1699 204 0.053 0.041
      36191 30537 5654 1864 1534 330 0.050 0.058
      34545 31060 3485 1811 1539 272 0.050 0.078
      32089 30752 1337 1847 1711 136 0.056 0.102

      Sure looks to me like the number of spontaneous abortions per UNvaxxed pregnancy is fairly stable and constant with time…

      Something is going on here.

        1. You want scary Science? I’ll give you scary science!

          “100% of Covid-19 Vaccine Deaths were caused by just 5% of the batches produced according to official Government data”

          “The VAERS data shows that 44% of the lots (219 / 494) were sent to just a single state within the USA, whilst a further 17% (86 / 494) were sent to 2 states, 10% (50 / 494) were sent to 3 states, 5% (24 / 494) were sent to 4 states, 3% (17 / 494) were sent to 5 states, 2% (11 / 494) were sent to 6 states, and just 0.4 (2 / 494) were sent to 12 states within the USA.”

          https://dailyexpose.uk/2021/10/31/100-percent-of-covid-19-vaccine-deaths-caused-by-just-5-percent-of-the-batches-produced/

          In other words, a conspiracy theory once again proved itself to require a spoiler alert.

          1. Table 4 is why I went off on some poor mommy-doc blogger that WP boosted into my feed. Honest, I do not go looking.

            “Should you get the clotshot while preggers? According to the APA, and my friend the pediatric cancer doc: Yes! It’s safe and effective!”

            You can trust your doctor exactly as far as you can trust your electrician.

    2. Yup. Seriously – I think people are going to go to jail over this when the “Truth and Reconciliation” tribunals hit.

      1. If we’re lucky.

        No-one’s been jailed over AIDS, and we gave the guys who poisoned our dTp (or was it just diptheria tetanus?) shots tax-payer funded immunity.

        I was a libertard normie-con at the time, so I thought the immunity + VAERs made sense!

        I did know that Faucci was a monster, though I do not know if Mr. Reagan was gulled or complicit. Always believed the former, but now…

  10. It’s great to be free here in the central United States.

    I see very few masks anymore but I am on the far side of a separated town from the big city which I avoid like the plague. I do take note of the few drivers wearing them and laugh.

    More and more information coming out says many of the vaxxed won’t be around soon. I do not know the truth about that but I hope Lizzie Warren was telling the truth for once about being vaccinated.

    1. I feel bad for her, as it is likely not her fault. I hear a bunch of evil white men gave her tribe a bunch of blankets infected with Covid.

  11. “No entrance without masks. If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.”

    This whole masking business is really strange and bizarre depending on where you’re at. I’m 40 miles outside Chicago. Illinois has a mask mandate in effect. I think we’re still only 1 of 5 or 6 states. It’s really depressing to watch supposedly grown men and women walking down the street on a bright, sunny day, fully masked (when not required to outside).

    We were recently visiting Branson, Mo. Was rare to see anyone in a mask there. Took off in our rental car to see the area and ended up in a weird/interesting little place called Eureka Springs, Ar. Lots of tiny shops, old Ozark mountain town, etc…Very few masks on tourists, (no mask mandate) but about 25% of the shops had signs on the door stating you could not enter without wearing one. I was not surprised to see those places had virtually no customers inside! How do you stay in business if you are telling your customers you have to perform this ritual when it’s not required before entering?

  12. The “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” pattern is established.

    Launch a virus. Institute draconian people control measures. Slightly relent. Launch Variant One. Resume and add more draconian measures. Slightly relent. Feign progress. Launch Variant Two. Resume and ratchet up draconian measures. Slightly relent. Launch Variant…

    It started with lockdowns and masks. Then vaccine mandates for employment and societal interaction. Transportation is next. Then comes the big one: commerce. Epicenter in Sweden was kind enough to get the Anti-Christ, Mark-O-The-Beast ball rolling with their new implantable chip offering so we know who’s been naughty and who’s been vaxxed.

    The remaining holdouts, all of whom prepped well with the understanding this was all coming, will use their stores. Too many will lack the luxury of renewable resources. Backed into the corner, they will transition to a more ‘primitive’ means of provisioning. I would not want to be in their way.

    1. “The “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” pattern is established.”

      It’s a pattern because it is a literal psy-op. Or it’s a massive coincidence that a world-wide response to a nothing-virus just happens to correspond to a psychological method for instilling ‘Learned Helplessness.’

      When punishment and reward come about randomly, without a means to control the outcome, people stop trying to control the outcome and they become passive. Participation trophies and other such aspects of the “self esteem” child-rearing theories would be a form of this, as it rewards people for no effort, thereby instilling the belief that reward is random and cannot be earned. Combine with random severe punishment such as the “zero tolerance” policies and you get learned helplessness.

    1. Ha! That was orginally a placeholder until I thought of something funnier. Believe me, at 5am (from the wrong side) I gave up.

      Elk milk. It does a body good.

    1. oops forgot something:

      There are a lot of things about the covid response that make me a bit suspicious of the motives of our elites. The thing that gives me the most heebeejeebies though is this:
      The massive number of elite events with official photographers, video, etc. where the elites aren’t wearing masks but the servant class is. It’s completely avoidable, they know the cameras are there. They are probably paying the photographers to make it look like a Big Deal. Yet there they are, in a room with lots of people yet no one is wearing a mask except the people carrying the hors d’oeuvre and drink trays. I’m used to researching crazy conspiracy stuff (that turns out to be true within 6 months), but this really does give me the shivers. And not the shivers like when you pee, but the real shivers like when you see gramma putting her dentures in, or your dad asks you how to clear his internet search history.

  15. Re: Amber Heard. Attractive girl when she isn’t wearing too much makeup, which seems to be about 90% of the time according to her Google Images.

    “there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread. ”

    I would suggest that if you still consider there to actually be a valid case you haven’t been paying attention. Additionally I’ve read articles by epidemiologists dating back to before the Wudemic that there never has been a scientific consensus among actual viral scientists regarding the efficacy of mask use for viruses. That’s not why doctors and nurses wear them (blood and bodily fluid spatter is the real reason) and they have a far greater negative effect in trapping exhaust gases and bacteria than they do in trapping milliscopic viruses.

    1. Yup. I’m mask-agnostic. I do know there are upsides and downsides. I would do A LOT to avoid wearing them. A LOT does not include the mRNA injection.

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