I live in Central Florida, halfway between Orlando and Tampa, not far from Lakeland, FL. Our county is rural, lots of lakes, lots of orange groves, lots of cows. Strangely enough, our access roads have been built is such a way that getting to Orlando (50 miles) is a nerve wracking experience, since the only logical way to get there is via Interstate 4. Between my house and Orlando, I4 passes through the Disney behemoth, making that stretch the most dangerous intestate in the US. On the other hand, getting to Tampa (also about 50 miles) is much more pleasant. You can get on I4 which is invariably less crowded going west but, unlike to Orlando, there are many alternate ways of getting there: Hwy 92, Hwy 60 and plenty of smaller country roads.
Passing through Polk County and the eastern stretch of Hillsborough County, you’ll see some of the poorest section of Central Florida. Hwy 92 especially is lined with broken down trailers, filthy trailer parks, mostly inhabited by migrant workers who work the strawberry fields around Plant City and by ne’er-do-wells from the North who come down here for the winter. Their dwellings are every bit as bad as the filthy, disease ridden Roma encampments in Central Europe, though one would not see a Dollar General or a run down gas station boasting 1960s pumps in Roma settlements.
All this as a short intro to today’s ramble. I have a daily commitment in Brandon, FL (in Hillsborough county, really a suburb of Tampa) and have to be on the road from 1pm till about 5pm. Most of the time I take highways going west, and side roads on the way home. And throughout my drive I listen to podcasts. Podcasts have been a godsend for me, and, I am certain, for millions of others. I listen to Steve Deace, Daniel Horowitz, Trish Wood and Tom Woods. I also listen to an extraordinary podcast called “No Agenda” run by two broadcast veterans, Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak. I used to listen to Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin but don’t anymore. Shapiro is an economic conservative but on the Covid file he almost echoes the MSM line (though tougher on the CDC) I’m not sure his heart is in it. Additionally, he is the fastest English speaker in the world and I have difficulty following him. Rubin comes across as a bit smarmy but if you ask me why, I couldn’t explain it. Just a vibe. Oh, I mustn’t forget Jordan Schachtel and his Dossier. The kid is 30 years old and sounds and talks like he’s 18 but you will not find a stauncher defender of individual liberty anywhere.
These shows provide me with excellent insight into what’s going on behind the scenes of the Kabuki Theater, known in official circles as “our battle with the SarsCoV2 virus” Some podcasts operate on a more visceral level (Horowitz), some are more measured (Tom Woods) but they all have the one thing in common which attracts me: they all reject the official storyline.
We need to step back a little bit. Why would a 68 year old dude with plenty of experience and education such as your humble scribe, have a problem with the official storyline? It’s a long story, but starting just after the 9/11 attacks there was a noticeable shift in media reporting. Not about the attacks themselves - the planes flew into those buildings, the death, the destruction, the enormity of suffering of the city, the nation, the world - those are real. I do NOT subscribe to any of the past and current conspiracy theories and I’ve seen them all. However: what changed was the tenor of reporting. Suddenly, everybody was afraid. “See something, say something”. The government established that most idiotic of agencies, the TSA and here we are, still taking our shoes off at airports, 20 years after one unsuccessful attempt at “sneaker terrorism”. And no one feels any safer, in fact, our fears have been exacerbated by these non-sensical government reactions. At the same time, the media started pumping up the fright. Domestically and overseas. The panoply of villains was vast: Al Qaida, ISIS, Iran, Hamas, domestic white supremacy terrorism and on and on. Of course, these are bad actors who deserve to be recognized as such but it seemed like the media not only kept throwing gasoline on the fire of fear and existential dread, they delighted in misreporting events, and perceptibly changing the slant, emphasizing America’s role in its own woes. And so, as time went on, what I read in the Israeli press, for example, and what I saw on CNN were two different things. The same applied to other parts of the world. Friends in Moscow were saying one thing but local media was unable to lift itself out of its ideological mire and report accurately, while at the same time constantly telling us to be afraid. And with every successive terror attack, the self-recrimination began quicker: sometimes as soon as the bodies were counted, and sometimes before. Then came 2016 and Donald Trump won the election despite every single media outlet assuring us this could not and would not happen. It was obvious something was seriously wrong. What was wrong was the uninterrupted river of lies and I simply stopped believing anything I was being told. If there is total dissonance between what you see (our local hospital Covid wing completely empty last summer) and what you hear (“every single hospital in Florida overwhelmed”) what other course can you take but seek out other sources of information?
When Covid first hit, I was truly scared - no less than everyone else. I remember watching a SKY News UK broadcast, showing a reporter in Bergamo, Italy, visiting a local hospital and the horror of what unfolded on my TV screen was truly apocalyptic. Scores of dying patients on ventilators, the staff in full hazmat gear, working around the clock, trying to save patients who were arriving by ambulance every five minutes, it seemed. I thought: “We’re screwed. This is the true Apocalypse Now, the zombie apocalypse, like the movies my wife enjoys watching” Those were very scary days. But then two things happened. About three or four days in, as we sat there transfixed, watching SKY News UK, something struck me: “Wait,” I said to Diane, “They’re showing the same reporter in the same hospital the third day in a row. In fact, it’s the same report, with a few slightly edited scenes. It’s in Bergamo, perhaps in Milan…but what’s happening elsewhere in Italy? In Rome? In Naples?” I looked into it and apart from citizens being locked in tight in their homes, nothing much was happening in Rome and certainly not in Naples. It was a localized outbreak but the media (not just SKY), chose to run the scariest, most blood curdling bit over and over. The second thing that happened was that I came across an article by Professor John Ioannides which cast doubt on the official story of the virus being 20 times more lethal than the flu. John Ioannides happens to be one the most cited and most published researchers in the field of epidemiology and he writes specifically on meta research. He had come to the conclusion that while we should take the virus seriously, we should not form hurried judgements. His own research told him SarsCoV2 would be about 2 - 3 times worse than the flu in terms of mortality. Precautions must be taken, yes, but a societal freak-out was not only unnecessary but would be hugely damaging in the long run.
Let’s get back to the present: I’m driving back from Brandon and I’m listening to one of my podcasts, which featured Dr. Robert Malone that day. Robert Malone explained in very calm, professorial tones what we’re doing wrong, why we should not be over-vaccinating during a pandemic, what the potential dangers of these vaccines were - all presented without emotion and with plentiful citations and references (not something you’ll hear on CNN - their only reference is Dr. Anthony Fauci) I think that over the course of the last 18 months I have become fairly knowledgeable - at least in the sense that I can read charts and studies and I have a good nose for who is a grifter and who really loves science.
And then I come home and read an email from my best childhood friend who is now a pediatric cardiology surgeon of some renown. Here’s how he opens his email: “Get vaccinated asap with whatever vaccine is available where you are. mRNA vaccines work splendidly as you can see from the data, assuming you interpret them correctly. The efficacy is 80% for Delta and the remaining 20% will have a light disease. Now that Florida numbers are high, get the shot right away or don’t leave the house. I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST LOCKDOWNS, THEY SAVE PEOPLE AND THE ECONOMY and I don’t understand the feverish, fanatic objections - especially when they come from stupid doctors” (I added the caps) “Lockdowns save people and the economy” What the…………
And this finally takes me from the back roads of Central Florida to the heart of the Matrix. No, I do not believe there is a vast world-wide conspiracy to bamboozle the entire population. I actually believe that most of what I call the “Matrix” is a conglomeration of very stupid people, somewhat stupid people, emotionally stupid people and a few very intelligent sociopaths who have figured out a way to turn all that stupidity, all that lack of foresight, all that lack of desire for knowledge into $$$. THAT Matrix certainly exists. But like everything in life, it’s a little more complicated. I happen to know that my friend, the cardiologist, is a very clever individual. Not because he has an MD, not because he’s chief of pediatric cardiac surgery and not because he has a PhD in statistics/math - impressive as those achievements are. I KNOW this man. I knew him when he was 5 years old and 10 years old and a teenager. Our parents were intimate friends. This is a guy with a high degree of emotional intelligence, well travelled, an avowed anti-Communist - so his is not a political stance. These beliefs of his are deeply and sincerely held and his advice to me is not some grandstanding or virtue signaling. This man saved my ass when I was extremely depressed in the mid-90s. He hopped on a plane and flew 9 hours to be with me, to make sure I didn’t harm myself. I have absolutely no reason to doubt his sincerity and yet everything he says I know to be wrong. The vaccines are not all that safe and they are definitely not all that effective. Why do I know it and he doesn’t? Is it HIS need to convince himself or is it MY need to convince myself, to convince ourselves of our respective truths? As a non-relativist I do not believe in “truths”, only in the truth. And therefore, one of us is wrong. I believe the data, the research, the facts on the ground are firmly on my side. Yet I know he has the same belief. So, for now, he has not been red-pilled yet and continues to live in the Matrix.
I pass some of the awful shacks on Hwy 92, heading east. The grass along the road is unkempt, overgrown, yellow. There is garbage everywhere. Dirty kids are running among the trailers, followed by mangy dogs. I step on the gas to get closer to the nice lakes and cows and oranges. The trailer dwellers, their wild children with hungry eyes, the emaciated cats, the toothless grandmas…do they even know there is a Matrix? Why the hell should they care?
This is such a good analysis. Like C. S. Lewis says, the common sense of the common man is often so much better than the snobbery of the intellectual who always wants to be up in the latest theories without actually being connected to the realities of how most people live. Similar understandings came to me while living in the villages of Luxor, Egypt at the start of this madness.
Of course it's real, they made 3 documentaries about it narrated by Keanu Reeves.