I’m no wilderness expert.. but I am pretty sure when you find yourself face to face with certain types of large, dangerous, wild animals, the best thing you can do is back up, ever so slowly, step by step. This is what it felt like to leave California.
Leaving was, for me, a really big deal. A third generation Californian, most of my extended family was local, plus my aging parents and two out of three siblings. Yeah, I had gone out of state for college, and lived on the East Coast for two years afterwards, but there was always a palpable expectation that I would eventually come home. In the late 90s, when I did, I did not explicitly plan to stay forever. But over time, with my parents getting into their seventies, I started to feel - in a way -trapped.
My husband and I talked, before covid, about me taking an overseas position with my global employer - temporarily, for a few years. Early into covid, a job opportunity with another company came up, in Singapore, but it felt too far away and the world seemed too unpredictable at the time. By Fall 2021, when we made the decision to permanently move out of CA, our oldest was applying to colleges and heavily leaning toward a 4-year stint in Europe. So… we decided we would go East (closer to her), and South.. (for warm winters), past DC because neither of us wanted the constant buzz of politics, to Atlanta - where we figured there would be enough people coming and going that we could integrate, despite not being from the South.
So, to sum it up, there was a light pull.. a craving for adventure, change, something different.. which got mashed up with the push of the vax policies at my employer, social and political sentiments in CA, our oldest leaving for college overseas, and with something else.
After the failed gubernatorial recall in September 2021, Governor Newsom announced that all schoolchildren over age 12 would be required to get the covid jab. I had attended multiple sessions (again, hosted by my naturopath) on covid and kids, done deep dives on multiple sources of data, risks and possible treatments. It was not difficult math to determine that the risk was greater than the benefit, particularly considering potential genetically-driven heightened risk for our daughter, if my FIL’s heart attack was vax related - which we could neither prove or disprove and didn’t much like to think about, in part because we had been part of his decision to get it.
The social, prevailing viewpoint did not align with ours.. at the time, it was standard to take your kid out of school on their 12th birthday, get a covid jab and post it on Facebook with great pride and fanfare. Our daughter’s Fall ‘21 birthday came and went and she had the candor to share with some of her classmates that she had not gotten the jab. This inspired multiple of her classmates to regale her with a combination of encouragement and shame - she hadn’t gotten the jab yet, but she could - and in their eyes, she should. It didn’t even hurt! Finally she caved and lied and said that she got it, after which playdate invitations started flowing, again.
It wasn’t just the students. Teachers believed - due to the propaganda telling them so - that covid vaccinations would stop the spread, reducing the daily risk to teachers with each student that complied. Teachers were forthcoming about their enthusiasm for kids to get vaxed, and disdain for those that weren’t. School policies followed CDC policies, which required longer quarantines for the unvaxed, if they were exposed - or got covid.
Looking back, it seems completely insane - because now we all know that the jabs do not prevent the spread. But imagine a time and scenario when YOU know definitively that they don’t stop the spread, any time you try to share that factual information it is censored (thank you, Facebook!) and 99% of the people around you have bought into the scam, with vigor, saying things like “we are all in it together” and updating their FB profiles with “Got my covid jab” frames. Layer onto that having an unforgettable understanding of what it’s like to be the “unusual case” who does have a negative reaction to a medical treatment. We knew it could possibly kill or seriously injure our daughter, we just didn’t know what the odds were. I did not want to play them - and mama bear kicked in, and simply WOULD NOT.
I have mentioned elsewhere that it is a beautiful thing that states have different policies. Certain states, including Georgia, passed laws that prohibited mandating the covid vaccine for kids in schools - which I found particularly interesting because CDC headquarters is in Georgia. Kinda reminds me of how Pfizer employees did not face covid vaccine mandates - nor did US politicians (!!)
There is a dark, heavy burden that comes with being on the outside of what everyone else believes, in an environment where difference is more than discouraged, it is actively demonized. To disagree was to be at risk: of being called out, ignored, unfriended, shamed or bullied. So noone dared speak out.
It’s amazing that the California of my childhood, in the 80s, has somehow evolved into an unspoken adoption of what feels like some form of communism. To lighten things a little, remember the garbage bag commercials of that era? Hefty hefty hefty, wimpy wimpy wimpy! Courage and brawn were celebrated (sometimes a little too much!) Now people are shamed if they are NOT afraid of what has evolved into nothing more than an over-publicized flu. As my brothers used to love to say, “what a bunch of candy asses”!
More seriously, where is the line, the standard at which we can get comfortable moving on from covid-era measures? From what I can tell, in CA, there is none. Sensitivity to others is celebrated above all else, facts are distorted and censored, and masks - whether worn or finally, at least temporarily abandoned - have left a permanent, invisible gag-tie in place that silently stifles the voices that might have, at one time, expressed their own words.
I can’t think of anything that Team blue could tell Californians to do, that they wouldn’t go along with. Fortunately, I won’t be there to see what that next thing is.
—————————————-
U2 - A Sort of Homecoming
And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, 'desire' time
And your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape.
On borderland we run.
I'll be there, I'll be there tonight
A high-road, a high-road out from here.
The city walls are all come down
The dust a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance.
And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill as the valleys explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of it's own.
O com-away, o com-away, o-com, o com-away, I say I
O com-away, o com-away, o-com, o com-away, I say I
Oh, oh on borderland we run
And still we run, we run and don't look back
I'll be there, I'll be there
Tonight, tonight
I'll be there tonight, I believe
I'll be there so high
I'll be there tonight, tonight.
Oh com-away, I say, o com-away, I say.
The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz.
No spoken words, just a scream
Tonight we'll build a bridge across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again tonight.
And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.
Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight at last I am coming home.
I am coming home.
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Paul David Hewson / Adam Clayton / Larry Mullen / Dave Evans
A Sort of Homecoming lyrics © Polygram Int. Music Publishing B.v.
"There is a dark, heavy burden that comes with being on the outside of what everyone else believes..." That's for damn sure, and you describe it beautifully, if harrowingly. Reading about your experience as a parent in CA makes me shake my head in anger and bewilderment. Good for you to get the hell outta Dodge.
We are clearly on the same page, you and I! I'm so glad you're adding your voice to the mix. We as a nation and as a world have lost the "critical middle" and need writers like you to remind us what it used to look and feel like. How can we stand even a whiff of a chance against unfolding oppression if we don't unite?
Thanks for launching your stack -- and feel free to reach out! Mary
The number one most important factor for determining quality of life on Earth is this:
What kind of system do you live under?
Think about it. If you tell us what kind of systems you live under - from systems of government, medicine, infrastructure, education, community, religion and more - chances are we can predict what kind of life you have.
Let's examine some recent problems: FTX. Voting systems. Medicine. Corruption. War. Homelessness.
It’s our own fault. All of it.
We have embraced the wrong kind of systems that govern over us - centralized ones - and they have become corrupted. It is time to change that. We need to understand and embrace decentralized systems, and fear centralized non transparent ones. And we need to be able to spot the difference.
Can you?
Once we recognize a system has been corrupted, it’s time to bust out the anecdote: TRANSPARENCY and DECENTRALIZATION.
Who wants to be part of a society of problem solvers instead of just complainers? Please, let's talk.
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/embrace-decentralized-systems-fear