I might be ready for “all COVID, all the time” to come back…

….Because the world we’ve created in the last 2 years is a lot worse

Warning: this post includes graphic images of a kind of stupidity that I literally felt like I had to paste in the graphics so that you would believe me. It’s longer than I intended, but most of it is pictures. And now, a prayer …. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….

When I wrote “14 days to stop the madness” at the beginning of January, I was pretty close to the correct timing. The Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s OSHA overreach, Starbucks walked back it’s vaccine mandate and enabled me to become a patron again, oil broke $90 a barrel to bring back memories of 2012 when the price deck we used was 90/4.25 flat, breakthrough cases blurred the line between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and the energy transition narrative collapse that I’ve highlighted for months as “the end comes when millions die and 10s of millions can’t afford their energy” has arrived. Like inflation, reality in your wallet is the only cure for perception.

But something sinister has arrived with this “new new normal” as well. Joe Rogan got lambasted for “misinformation” while Bill Maher becomes a lightening rod of criticism for “the left” for allowing another disgraced former leftist to say “she’s over COVID.” (I hate the term “the left” but it’s truly the only way to describe it. I will use “the right” when appropriate as well and I don’t mean it disparagingly, necessarily).

Second worst has undoubtedly been Jeff Zucker, who got laid off at CNN for having a 2 year (20 year) consensual relationship with Allison Gollust. I want to be clear, I give none of the F@&ks what happens in your bedroom, as long as it’s consensual. You do you. And sure, it doesn’t look great that Allison has always worked for him, and there may be questions of “was she the best candidate” but Joe Biden literally said “the next Supreme Court Justice will be a black woman…” so spare me the indignant outrage over such a trivial matter. Clearly they worked well together and saved costs on hotel rooms while traveling.

My complaints are of the intellectual consistency kind, as they ALWAYS are. For Steve Easterbrook of McDonald’s, he didn’t get shock and outrage and sadness by the anchors at CNN. He got absolutely ripped for his abuse of power and bad judgement and CNN helpfully added qualifiers to descriptors (as they do with January 6th) and provided all the negative details in every article they wrote.

But for me, even that hypocrisy (don’t forget the Kavanaugh vs. Andrew Cuomo treatment in the first place) pales in comparison to the fact that more people aren’t outraged when they examine the fact pattern of WHY the worst kept secret in showbiz (everyone knew Allison and Jeff have been together forever) came out THIS week.

CNN fired Chris Cuomo for using his contacts to assist his brother, Andrew, the then Governor of New York. Chris sued. In “discovery,” Zucker and Gollust’s relationship became extremely important because Allison Gollust was the Communications director for Andrew Cuomo in 2012. Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust were dating and deciding what was going to be on CNN. They organized to have Chris interview Andrew all the time, while advising Cuomo on how to leverage his COVID record against Trump and presumably position him for a presidential run in 2024, while simultaneously bashing Trump and hailing Fauci, the un-fireable, at every turn! I mean, come on! That level of undisclosed conflict of interest in “the trusted name in news” is almost as ridiculous as Pfizer’s sponsorship of news segments like Anderson Cooper’s 360, and then expecting him to say anything but “the vaccines are safe, get your booster.” If you haven’t seen the clip below, it’s worth the two minutes.

But somehow, even those two grievous examples of what is sinister about “the new new normal”, nothing even comes close to what’s going on in Canada.

The CBC, which is a government controlled entity is declaring that the protest is an occupation, racist, hateful and sedition. What happened to the BLM descriptions of “mostly peaceful protests” and “supporting people’s important viewpoints?”

A lawyer has filed a class action lawsuit for $9.8 mm for “pain and suffering” of those that live in downtown Ottawa, helpfully that’s the exact amount of money raised on GoFundMe prior to them shutting the site down.

Simultaneously, GoFundMe has halted payments of the $9.8 mm raise FOR the convoy, and amazingly said that if the donors didn’t ask for refunds, they would distribute it to worthy causes THEY identify (after the horror and outrage of that decision, they walked it back and said they will give refunds).

Meanwhile, in reality when “the left” approves, Gofundme raised millions for Black Lives Matter protests, that you may recall from the looting and burning, had some bad apples.

They used their own name to support CHOP, which was an occupation that finally got broken up because their were sexual assaults and robberies every night.

And this was the statement made by the CEO of Gofundme about BLM.

And when PM Trudeau was asked about why he won’t negotiate with the truckers and visit face to face, he said accused the trucker convoy crowd of "hateful rhetoric" and "violence toward citizens," and that prefers to attend BLM protests.

If this is what the world looks like post COVID, I’m ready for another variant. But this time, please make it strong enough to kill me.