00:00:00.000It feels like only yesterday that we were all wearing masks and kids were wearing masks to school and these experts were all over the television and people were doing dances for Dr. Fauci on TikTok and nurses were the new heroes.
00:03:58.420Whether we overreacted and whether we should have just done herd immunity
00:04:03.820uh immediately or maybe not quite immediately but once we started to get some idea of the
00:04:10.680fatality rate etc we should have just done herd immunity i think that's a reasonable position
00:04:16.320to hold and it was wrong but you you have to put yourself in the position of public
00:04:22.660health officials and in december and january of uh 2019 and then 2020 i mean the the kind of
00:04:31.500reaction that was on social media, you would see images of Chinese people like wigging out and
00:04:37.640smashing windows and as if they were infected. And it was like the rage virus or something like
00:04:43.440that. And so I understand why people overreact sort of better to overreact than underreact.
00:04:49.520But they weren't able to recalibrate. And I can even remember in 2022, attending a Zoom school
00:04:58.860board meeting where they were still talking about masking being like three days a week or
00:05:04.980semi-voluntary and even I as a COVID believer was at a point where I'm like guys please like can we
00:05:15.780please just try to learn something from this experience and not pretend like this is December
00:05:22.1602019 or something like you you have to adjust um but uh anyway i didn't speak up actually because
00:05:30.520i didn't want to make a uh i don't want to make a i don't want to make a i don't want to turn
00:05:37.120make create another scandal other people were speaking up and i just let them talk let the
00:05:41.700cowboys talk february march of 2020 i was in my mom's room and she had she has a tv in her room
00:05:48.100we were watching the news and they were showing um they were digging up plots like mass burial
00:05:56.340plots because the the morms or something were overrun or something to that effect i remember
00:06:03.280physically or like being overcome with uh i didn't cry or weep or something but something
00:06:08.520like like tightened in me it was like very emotionally evocative and now thinking back
00:06:13.780and it's like it's so duplicitous and how like overly propagandistic it was because there was
00:06:19.800no way that you could see that in that time period of february march of 2020 and not be like
00:06:24.140what's happening something very serious is happening it's like those images being
00:06:29.680being through your screen to you it's like there's no it's not surprising how crazy people went but
00:06:35.180the thing about covid was that it was so quickly politicized the the politicization of it switched
00:06:41.540early on if you remember that is very interesting actually it was like first the right wing
00:06:47.400exactly first the right wing was overreacting and the nancy pelosi literally did a hug your
00:06:55.760asian friend benefit in like february yeah wow and then immediately flipped and because of that
00:07:04.200politicization of it it became intractable in every way right it became intractable if you were
00:07:10.380covid skeptical became intractable if you were a covid believer and i think hopefully what we can
00:07:16.600real and probably is too much to ask but if this winter virus continues to go the way it goes
00:07:21.600it probably will similarly be incredibly politicized but i think like with trump in
00:07:27.280power now the whole warp speed thing is kind of a very awkward subject thankfully we're democrats
00:07:34.740again so i can say fuck donald trump and fuck operation warp speed but it's like that's not
00:07:40.480something he like he touts it as an accomplishment but it's something he like begrudgingly touts as
00:07:45.980an accomplishment it's one of those things where it's like if you want the epstein files i don't
00:07:49.260want your support i did the the warp speed operation warp speed was a great success it's like
00:07:54.600try it again motherfucker let's see let's roll the dice like i don't know well another thing
00:07:59.980just to point out remember when mike pence was debating kamala harris kamala harris said you
00:08:06.480know i'm pro science i'm pro vaccine but i ain't taking that trump uh vaccine like no child yeah
00:08:14.140it's true i mean i'm not even exaggerating her response which gets to this bigger picture
00:08:20.180that at least concerns me as a fascistic totalitarian thinker which is that you can't
00:08:29.640like there has to be some sort of obedience on behalf of the public.
00:08:37.620You know, maybe you're late in paying your parking tickets
00:08:43.100or you owe taxes or whatever, but you ultimately obey.
00:08:50.440And there seems to be something really problematic,
00:08:55.640And it's deeper than maybe we even appreciated where there's no like public spiritedness or good faith effort.
00:09:05.460But there's there's really no obedience on the part of the public.
00:09:10.560And it does show some sort of social breakdown that might be occurring when people just say no to things like, for instance, let me say this.
00:09:21.180On behalf of fellow liberals and Democratic leftists, you know, wearing the mask, look, if we look back on it, maybe we should have just not even bothered to wear a mask at all at any time.
00:09:38.040It was not effective enough to, in a cost-benefit analysis, to justify the just pain and annoyance and et cetera of mask wearing.
00:09:54.440But the mask, it wasn't just about that.
00:09:56.460It was a signal that you were pro-social.
00:09:59.160Now it's ironic and contradictory because that was the most antisocial time that we were going through and wearing a mask where you can't, you can see their eyes and their eyebrows. You can't really see their facial expression. You're not, you had a difficult time. At least I did connecting with people, you know, on an emotional level because of the mask.
00:10:20.040So on some, on a surface level, it was antisocial, but on a deeper level, it was a pro-social
00:10:27.140signal because you were basically saying, I care about you.
00:10:47.200the right refusing to wear it yelling at people at target like it was a shocking display of
00:10:56.860anti-social behavior on the right i understand what you're getting at yeah it's it feels it
00:11:02.720feels very much to me like how the person who puts the sign outside of their front door that
00:11:08.220says in this house we believe in science no human is illegal etc etc i have that that is also a
00:11:13.340signal a pro-social signal however in reality that pro-social signal is an excuse to be incredibly
00:11:22.200anti-social to the people around them in the same way that you're mentioning this the mask is a
00:11:27.100signal of pro-socialness in the abstract but in the concrete immediate is a very anti-social thing
00:11:34.440that separates you from the people around you and and for speaking for me the whole reason i became
00:11:39.060of whatever the fuck i became of the anti-left marxist the thing that radicalized me was an
00:11:46.280afternoon at work i went to go get a slice of pizza at the thing for lunch and they said let
00:11:52.740me see your your vaccine card and i was like what it was the first day of it i was like i don't have
00:11:58.320that and i looked behind me and everyone just kind of averted their gaze not because i'm a fat brown
00:12:03.100ugly person but just because it was an awkward thing and it's like i had to stand outside the
00:12:07.020door and wait for my slice of pizza and that was a bca a bc ad type of moment where there i was a
00:12:14.580changed person because of that intrusion and you know one thing about one more thing i'll say about
00:12:19.560this thing about the the the refusal to obey yeah the only reason that that works is because of
00:12:25.980blacks and it's so funny that right wingers were able to kind of piggyback off of blacks lack of
00:12:33.380obeisance to the state in order to like frame it as like a libertarian they're correct yes it is a
00:12:41.220a pro-liberty anti-statist type of position but it could only work in this society where we have
00:12:47.460a 14 of the population that is naturally disobedient to the state etc etc etc that was
00:12:52.060able to kind of like the same reason why the democrats democrats can't ban menthol cigarettes
00:12:57.340you know as a menthol cigarette enjoyer myself i piggyback off of the disobedience of the black
00:13:02.620community for that reason right a couple of thoughts here though but like let's say
00:13:09.020we are being invaded by not a virus but another foreign armies and the government just announces
00:13:20.080to you we are rationing goods we are sheltering in place in homes uh if you have ammunition and
00:13:28.740weapons. You need to give a listing of it to your local police officer so they might want to use it
00:13:37.420or they could know where it is if your home gets taken over by an army and so on. This is a bit
00:13:43.400far-fetched, but certainly possible, more than possible. And again, would right-wingers react
00:13:51.380in this way where nothing can get done and the state has no power over anything. The state can't
00:14:00.240defend itself. Arguably, a virus can be more deadly than a foreign army. A foreign army can
00:14:08.340be shot and defeated, the virus less so. It's harder to defeat a virus. And thus, again,
00:14:15.240And just speaking as a statist myself, there's actually something profoundly problematic about these people who I don't think would obey in any situation.
00:14:29.180And they'd learn on the Internet that the armies aren't real and that it's a liberal plot to take your guns or to secretly kill you through a vaccine or whatever.
00:14:39.760and just that if in the 1950s for instance with my um i was talking with my mother she was born
00:14:46.340she's a true baby boomer born in the my mother and father true baby boomers born in the years
00:14:52.640right after the second world war when there was measles vaccines they just lined up they vaccinated
00:15:02.200in louisiana for my mom um and mississippi for my dad's deep red you know it wasn't red at that
00:15:10.760time if you don't understand it was we're dixie gradationist yeah yeah dixie grad
00:15:15.580family tradition to be democratic we believe in liberties certain state liberties and rats
00:15:25.980um but uh both of them there's a new vaccine out and you're in third grade okay we're lining up
00:15:35.200just literally total compliance and there's just this odd thing and i i think there are all these
00:15:44.180ironies going on here and i'll just do two and then i'll let you guys talk but this odd thing
00:15:49.980of like the conservatives want to go back to the 1950s when everyone got along we were one nation
00:15:55.840well okay but like you wouldn't fit in in the 1950s because in the 1950s people of both parties
00:16:04.380lined up to get vaccinated when they were told and no one complained um another thing
00:16:14.320so much of right wing you know thought nationalism is about being infected by the outside world
00:16:23.720you know like the illegal immigrants they're destroying our country you know we've heard
00:16:29.100this over and over again you get this just gift where all of the liberals now agree with you
00:16:38.540in your xenophobic closed border nationalist philosophy and yet you reject it you're like no
00:16:48.540we don't want to accept this political gift uh that no one could have ever imagined before where
00:16:56.380we're gonna just shut down the borders and immigration kick people out papers please hey
00:17:03.160you over there that funny looking person trying to get a pizza papers please oh you left your
00:17:11.080papers at home on your way sir like i mean i'm sorry but it's like they they have this dream of
00:17:19.620the 1950s and then when they're given an opportunity to react it they're the ones
00:17:25.360not complying i i do find i find this very troublesome and i do find it at the very least
00:17:31.280highly ironic well because your parents and my grandparents etc whatever my grandparents were
00:17:37.580they had never seen an autistic child before right so there that's another thing that leads
00:17:43.700into this is this type of pharmaceutical skepticism vaccine skepticism that underlies
00:17:47.640this where it's like there was no jenny mccarthy to say like or rfk to say they're making your kids
00:17:54.060autistic etc etc etc so it's like how could you know in the 50s where you're that you're going
00:18:00.020to need 30 vaccines before you're two years old etc etc etc so it's i i i understand what you're
00:18:07.540saying but i still think that it was something that was so incredibly heavy-handed that i i like
00:18:15.340american liberty i like the american libertarian type of ethos because it lets me be a faggot and
00:18:21.660lets all types of things happen so i'm still you know i am an anti anti-covid vaccine mandate
00:18:31.760mass deportations democrat whatever that is the eternal queer