Since moving to this tiny gold country town back in May, I’ve been trying to fight against my natural tendency to (1) be a hermit, and (2) have a non-existent social life. Fortunately, this little town has community activities every month, including a third Thursday potluck, and a second Saturday breakfast at the local church. I’m not religious (I’m an agnostic raised as an Episcopalian, so my unbelief guarantees that I’m going straight to hell), but I do like going to the church breakfast. It’s a chance to meet people and confront my natural shyness head-on. It’s been a good experience; people have been kind and welcoming; and I’ve done a little volunteering for the community center as a result of these meetups.
But I’m still feeling very cautious about revealing my status as a Covid dissident. I don’t know how Covid-crazy this town got, because I was living in Vermont during the worst of the insanity. I’ve been encouraged by the knowledge that the voters in this town rejected Governor Newsom by a huge margin in the last election. But I continue to exercise restraint.
Yesterday, before the church breakfast, I picked up a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914 that was waiting for me at the post office. I was so eager to take a look at it (it’s the second, hugely expanded edition) that I unwrapped the package at the breakfast a few minutes later and started leafing through it. It’s a massive tome that impressed a couple of my table neighbors. One neighbor was very interested in it, so much so that she asked if she could have it when I was finished. So I agreed, and she gave me her card with her phone number, and I gave her my phone number.
Then we got to talking about about my t-shirt, a de-motivational bit of humor from Despair.com that says “MORE PEOPLE HAVE READ THIS T-SHIRT THAN MY BLOG”. So my new friend asked me for the URL of my blog. Out of the aforementioned caution, I refused, saying it wasn’t interesting to most people.
When I got home, I looked up this person and discovered that I was wise to have not divulged my blog URL. I found that she had written a few entries in a Wordpress blog in 2020 that expressed her true devotion to the Branch Covidian sect in the clearest terms. She described people who don’t wear masks or practice antisocial distancing as fools, and was ecstatic about the election of Joe Biden, viewing it as a Great Leap Forward in the fight of The Science™ against the Worst Disease Ever (my words, not hers).
Another interesting (and perhaps not surprising) thing was that this person was a retired microbiologist. One of the strange features of the Scamdemic was the almost complete devotion to the false Covidian Science™ by scientists, whom you’d expect to be smarter about this stuff.
I suppose it’s only fair for someone on the other side to lay into Covid dissidents so strongly, since I was so ruthlessly sarcastic here about Branch Covidians. Nevertheless, I continue to attempt to be kind to people on the other side of this Great Divide — I have to, given that many of my friends and family members are on the other side.
Still, this kind of discovery is a bit discouraging. So far, I have met exactly six people who are on my side of this Divide, and five of them live 3000 miles away in Vermont. It may just be a fact of life in the New Normal that the community of people that I can really trust (see the meme above) is mainly online. It’s a depressing thought, admittedly, but perhaps one that I need to accept.
Update: I found the winter 2020 newsletter of this town’s community center. As I had suspected, it was mostly devoted to promoting the Standard Narrative (masks, antisocial distancing, “vaccines”), while at the same time lamenting the immense disruption caused by the NPIs (job losses, school closures, business closures).
Glad you are taking steps to get out there!
I have a similar tale. Difficult meeting folks (newer in town here). For one, there's a kind of divisive self-censorship that's been formed since 2020. "Did they, or didn't they?" The answer right away either draws me closer or turns me away. smh
And I don't know about you, but I have concerns about shedding. Insane!
Thanks