Woody Gives It To Us Gently EP75 : Monologue
In early March of 2020 I was warning friends of mine of what I was hearing about through alternative media, something about a virus in China. The videos that were circulating were frightening but I still thought in the back of my mind that what I was hearing about in China couldn't happen here. I lived through the bird flu scare, I listened to Jackie Chan and no longer played with dead birds. Plus, this is America, the safest country on Earth. I thought our military industrial complex that I paid all this money for in taxes would be able to spot a virus headed our way like it was a balloon the size of a couple school busses. Ladies and gentleman, maybe I was wrong?
A few short days later as I was anticipating going to a concert with some friends I got word that the show was postponed due to the outbreak. Even though I was the only one out of that group of friends that payed any attention to the news, let alone those YouTubers everyone was worried about radicalizing people. I thought that the hype would die down and as usual the media and its alternatives would soon move on to a different story. I was wrong again.
When I got the call from my boss at the time that business was shutting down indefinitely, I had experienced being laid off before, but never because of something like this. I still thought as I finished up running my errands that day, to the laundromat and grocery store that I'd only be out of work for the 2 weeks my boss told me. I was pissed that I'd have to use the stupid unemployment site to claim those 2 weeks and I'd probably have to fill out a bunch of forms. I hate forms, especially confusing ones designed by people in government positions. This, still I thought, would be the greatest sacrifice I would have to make, and I was wrong.
How could something like this have snuck up on me? I listened to Tim Pool and Alex Jones talk about it, I listened to Steven Crowder and The Quartering, but when the lockdowns happened I was stunned. Hearing those words come out of President Trump's mouth at the press conference that Friday the 13th made everything devastatingly real. I knew then that my country would be facing a great challenge but I was still confident that these measures would be temporary. I was worried about the effects on the economy of shutting down businesses for 2 weeks, that's a whole pay period for a lot of folks like me who live paycheck to paycheck I thought. With all of the compounding side effects of shutting down this industry and that industry for 2 whole weeks was something that was gonna cost a fortune for the world's economies. It was gonna take years to recover from this I thought. I believed like after 9/11 we would spend trillions but our way quality of life here in America would stay relatively the same and things would normalize again just like after that disaster. You know it folks, I was wrong again.
For the next several weeks I was constantly listening to something about Covid. I had nothing but alternative media channels on my YouTube subscription list and I would jump from video to video all day soaking up as much info as I could. It caused problems in my relationship because even though I was trapt in my apartment, with no job, no guaranteed future, and no social life, I was listening and thinking about how this may have happened.
The idea that this virus came from a wet market in China, right next to a biolab was a huge red flag that everyone noticed. It was telling watching certain left wing outlets how they went along with the Chinese Communist Parties claims and cheered on their authoritarian approach to solving this crisis. How efficient the government is there my leftist friends would say, we'd never be able to take that same approach here because people like their freedoms too much they claimed. Some would continue on with that same way of thinking, even until all the evidence that has been presented so far today, and they still believe that the government should have done more to us. They believe we should have locked down harder, masked forever, and any new shots that come out should be mandatory. At this point, folks that still believe that are no longer my friends. Not after what happened after those initial 2 weeks.
If the world had just gone back to whatever normal was after 2 weeks of lockdown I probably would have went back into the cozy cocoon of alternative media but carried on with my life. Still thinking I was smarter than those leftist friends of mine. Still believing in voting in the right candidates like Donald Trump, whom they hated. But I knew better because I understood then that the other side of the aisle was evil and authoritarian. Then Trump told me that the lockdowns were being extended, that the biggest companies on the planet were going to start working with him and the government to solve this issue and a sinking feeling came over me. My president, who's supposed to be on the “Right” is claiming that what I would call Fascism to solve this problem. That everyone I knew was gonna be on some form of welfare. That industries, my culture, and what I believed in politically were all about to fail me.
The depression I suffered after that pushed me further into listening and I started to write down what I was hearing and feeling. I gained weight, drinking no longer helped, and I lived with an ear bud in waiting for the good news that this was over.
3 years later, and this isn't over. We're still knee deep in an emergency. My faith in my country, my culture, and what was presented to me as alternative media has been shattered and I've been looking for a new one ever since.
As of late though, I have found a new home here with all of you. All of us that were betrayed by our own government, who's faith in each other was tested, who's culture abandoned them, and whose media lied to them or kept up the normalcy bias that everything was gonna be ok and to trust the sick plan. For those of us that have survived the past 3 years I think its our turn to take over the decisions made in our lives. I don't wanna go back to the old normal, I want what we should have had in this country all along, and that's control over our own destinies, and each week that we meet up here I feel we become closer to that. Thank you all for being here, being part of the crew, and restoring my faith and saving my life.