Are vaccines breaking apart the nascent anti-woke movement?

Happy Friday! 🥳

I’ve noticed a disheartening trend on social media: people who were fully on board with the push-back against the worst excesses of critical race theory becoming hostile to former allies who question the Covid vaccine and specifically vaccine mandates. 

Not everyone who was awakened to the dangers of CRT is now turning on the vaccine-hesitant, but some are and I find it particularly ugly. I also find it jarring that so many people who I thought maybe shared my moral code are totally fine with forcing unwanted medical procedures on children whose families do not want those procedures; or banning people from normal life because those people have real concerns or reasons not to take the vaccine.

As unfortunate as it is, though, I think understand where the pro-vax, anti-woke crowd are coming from. It’s coming from their foundational belief in their own understanding and grounding in “reason” and “science.”

I put those words in scare quotes not because I don’t also appreciate reason or science, or because I think they are somehow not real. I put them in scare quotes because these people have not yet seen the man behind the curtain and have yet to be deflowered from the virginal state of trusting the narrative. 

Or maybe I should say they have not allowed themselves to see — because once you do, it’s a painful moment of rupture with everything you thought you knew and everything that made society safe. 

It’s patently obvious to anyone who isn’t ideologically possessed that telling white children they are fundamentally not good because of the colour of their skin is a terrible thing to do. It’s also taken as a baseline by the majority of the smart set that getting your child vaccinated against measles or chicken pox is a good thing to do. These two beliefs fall within “reason.”

I agree with both those stances. But because I question everything government has done in regards to Covid, for very good reason, I am suddenly a mouth-breathing Science Denier (which is quickly turning into the 21st century version of a witch) or worse — a real physical threat.

I have no interest in posturing as an expert, because I do not need to. I don’t claim to know how to read data, or understand biology, or medicine. Perhaps because I have a deep awareness of how much I do not understand, I am not emotionally attached to my own understanding of complex matters of science. I know I don’t know, and I’ve made peace with that. My self-worth is in no way connected to my understanding of math or statistics or science. Because I know I don’t know, on certain things I withhold judgement, I listen.

And because I listen, I hear things that alarm me. While I don’t have deep scientific knowledge, I do have a finely-tuned bullshit detector that comes from being an adult human who has been observing the follies of humankind for four decades. Because I have a strong internal compass I know I don’t need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows. 

So what I don’t do is conflate giving a child a vaccine for measles with giving a child a vaccine for Covid. I don’t point to the eradication of polio and extrapolate from that a favourable view on the mass-vaccination against Covid. 

My bullshit detector was set off in a big way about five years ago, when I first noticed the madness of critical race theory and its unabashed acceptance on the part of all the US institutional elites. That taught me an important lesson: that those in power do not know better than I do; they do not have my or my child’s best interest at heart; and they are lead not by “science” or “reason” at all. I can’t claim to know what goes on in private meetings or in people’s hearts, but judging on outcomes alone I would guess that our current elites are being lead by a mixture of greed, fear, groupthink and smugness, with a bit of lust for power thrown in. 

So why would I trust them on the vaccine? Most especially when they are not even trying to convince, they are trying to force. 

However, if you have been third-level educated, come from a nice bourgeois family, and have a decent white-collar job — you have probably not had any reason to mistrust authority. If you are in any way elite-adjacent, authority has — up until now — probably served you quite well. It’s hard to give up the sense of safety of place when you have known it all your life. It means you are no longer in the in-group. You are now fallen. And as I’ve written before, to be fallen is painful.

Of course, Covid has another advantage over sensible people that CRT did not have. It’s a disease that makes you physically sick and can even kill you. And that, understandably, scares people. Isn’t it so much easier to believe that if we just take this magical shot, we are no longer in danger? 

And since so many millions of us have spent the better part of two years locked down, far from loved ones, living in isolation both physical and spiritual, made huge sacrifices for the goal of keeping society at large safe: how could we then turn down The Science™ and reject our best chance at ending this nightmare? It’s not surprising that those of us who take that stance are enraging and unfathomable, even to those we were ideologically close to before. 

Nonetheless, it is disappointing — to put it mildly — that those of us who fear the agenda of corporations and the corrupt government more than the effects of Covid itself have our concerns dismissed, maligned and simply ignored by our former friends, allies and loved ones. 

Someone who is very dear to me inadvertently revealed this to me a few months ago. Speaking with some distress about how he now has to check the vaccine status of customers at his workplace, he said it was because “people won’t get vaccinated.” It was an a-ha moment for me. It’s not the fault of the government that he now has to comply with insanely onerous, invasive government regulations - it’s the fault of those annoying people who just won’t do as they’re told.

I do not claim to know the outcome of the Covid emergency and its resultant bio-medical mandates. It is possible that every dissenting scientist who I have heard convincingly talk about the dangers of the shot will turn out to be wrong. In fact, I sincerely hope they do turn out to be wrong. If and when that happens, I will shout it from the rooftops and rejoice on my way to the vaccination centre, sleeved rolled up and arm at the ready.

But what I do know, for absolute certain, is that the societal cleavages opened up first by CRT and then the vaccine mandates will not be soon healed. 

And who has benefited thus far from that division? Not you or me. Pfizer. J&J. The unelected administrative state. The already rich. 

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