sowing joy in the era of compulsory, media-stoked despair

This past weekend I experienced the precious joy of speaking freely and excitedly trading hushed stories with new friends. This was at the covid litigation conference, an event attended by covid heroes Pierre Kory, Ryan Cole, Jeff Childers and Robert Malone.  I spent a soul-nourishing afternoon with two other vax apartheid heroines.  Each of us said, in slightly different phrases translating to the same punchline, that our significant other was supportive, yet saw us as being hopelessly obsessed with covid.  It’s not a compliment, but it’s accurate.  You don’t just go through the most fundamental, deepest human trauma - being rejected and cast out from society - and get right back to relaxed mornings in your jammies, pushing floaty Cheerios nonchalantly around the bowl with a gleaming spoon.

Malone was the closing speaker at the conference. He was shorter than I expected.. wearing comfortable shoes, looking slightly weary, and also like he had favorable odds of passing for Santa Claus during the Holidays.  I had mixed feelings about what he might say.  Of all the substacks I follow, his is easily the most intense and haunting, when it comes to the darker side of how “covid con” (my term, isn’t it fun?) went down and why it may be only the beginning.

The man is an awesome speaker.  Unassuming yet incredibly intelligent, driven and knowledgeable, stringing together piece after piece in his thesis that modern day warfare has evolved into a battle for our minds.  If we are distracted, hopeless, misinformed, there is no need for violence, as our government quietly transitions from a flawed, but functional, democracy to an authoritarian dystopia.  What makes his perspective so unique and disturbing is his inside understanding of the US military and intelligence agencies.  One of his slides was about the intelligence alliance our government has with Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia, many of the Western nations who went most surprisingly and starkly authoritarian.  Another bit was a recruiting video for the US military’s covert ops, that concludes with the statement “we are everywhere”.  The most striking image from the military ad sequence was of wide, red velvet seats in a theater, which jogged my memory of a brief, but conspicuously political, gratuitous moment in the latest Ted Lasso episode where Keeley yells out, without context or instigation, “F you Joe Rogan”.  (Product placement ads for politics, ugh.  I would have preferred a soda bottle). By the end of Malone’s talk, I was left with the feeling that the political events and representations of them that we hear about from the media are akin to reality TV programs, where everything is scripted, yet made to look natural.

I received an email from my daughter’s school about the shooting in Nashville.  It included talking points, which I skimmed and concluded were innocuous, though predictably and perhaps appropriately focused solely on grief.  Noone EVER wants anyone, much less a child, to be killed.  What happened is horrible,  heartbreaking and deplorable, no question.

I could not help but think about the plague of anxiety and mental illness that weighs down this generation.  Can we not also put things in perspective, to ease some of their fears?  Were it not for the political agenda (to advance the cause of gun control), we absolutely could!  I took the school’s prompt to discuss the topic with my “student” and turned it into a real-world lesson in critical thinking.  I did some quick searches for deaths by cause for children (I know, not a fun topic or search I had done before) and found a few results.  CNN - nope.  CDC - sorry, no.  A critical step in research is to find a reliable source of information.  Here is what I chose:

Later, we had a (hopefully, for her) meaningful discussion about what the chances of dying as someone < age 19 are, and from what.  We talked about how ALL gun deaths are grouped together even though Homicide and Suicide are very different things, why the government may have requested they be combined and how it ties to the gun control agenda.  Then we talked through what the actual percentages of all of this amount to, far below 1% risk, with car accidents being the highest - not deaths involving guns.

An hour or so afterwards, I noticed that she was singing while we made smoothies, and later, near bedtime, that she skipped, like her younger self, out of my room and down the hall to take her shower:  rare and telling indications of joy.  I like to believe that she felt lighter by understanding that, as terrible as the day’s events were, she does not need to live in fear.

During our discussion, I asked her if she had ever felt inspired and afraid at the same time. She thought about it and responded “no” very quickly.  I told her that was no coincidence:  the media rains negative information on us incessantly - whether it is about body image or current events or you name it.  There is always something to feel bad about, and some new distraction to follow.  This is what Malone was talking about - the battle for our minds, though perhaps not in quite the way he meant.

There is ALWAYS a reason to be afraid - every moment, every day, every story, every headline.  If we choose not to fall for it, the world reveals itself once again as a beautiful place, full of freedom, hope, creativity and inspiration.