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Mark Oshinskie
Mark Oshinskie is an attorney, athlete, artist, agricultor, and advocate.
When I was growing up in the 1960s-70s, we often played late summer and fall football games in various locations: on streets, vacant lots, school fields, suburban yards, a grocery store parking lot (under the lights) or in parks. In the games on grass surfaces, we played tackle. Often, ten-plus boys participated. It was a different world then, with bigger families, rougher boys, no cell phones, video games or computers and fewer, liability-based restrictions. We spent more time face-to-face. And with our faces in the dirt.
One summer day, we were playing a six-kid tackle game in my parents’ front yard. The crew included my 11-year-old little brother, Danny, and our next-door neighbour, Artie. Artie was mouthy, a year older, a couple of inches taller and at least ten pounds heavier than Danny. Danny had two older brothers and, therefore, was used to scraps with boys bigger than he was. Danny’s always had exceptional coordination and, although he was quiet, a disposition and moral code that included “taking no mess.”
During the game, Artie delivered a cheap shot to Danny and then taunted and shoved him. I and the other three players stood back and allowed Danny and Artie to engage in dispute resolution.
Given Artie’s size and age advantage and that Artie also had an older brother, I wondered how this would go for Danny. But to the onlookers’ surprise, Danny took the fight to Artie. After some punches were thrown, Danny took Artie to the ground and applied to Artie various wrestling moves, including a “Figure 4”: a leg-scissoring, gut-wrenching move that I had taught to, and previously used on, Danny. It made Artie groan in pain and at some length. Danny followed with another flurry of punches. The bout went on for several minutes, with Danny delivering, as they used to say, “a serious physical.” It was an impressive, tenacious display.
After having taken a beating, Artie, who lived next door, eventually escaped Danny’s grasp; or maybe Danny let him go. Artie was six feet closer to his house than was Danny. Given this opening, Artie turned and began sprinting the thirty yards to his front door.
Briefly surprised by Artie’s retreat, but saying nothing, Danny bolted after Artie. With Danny in pursuit, Artie reached the screen door, flung it open and lunged inside, the door thwacking shut and then rebounding open behind him. Arriving at the door a few seconds later, Danny flung it reopen and continued the chase into Artie’s house.
The four of us watching were stunned, though amused. Danny didn’t care whose house it was. Though he had clearly thrashed Artie, Danny wasn’t done with him.
Some people I know think or say that I’m “obsessed with Covid.” I’ve been speaking and writing against the lockdowns/lockouts from Day 1. I knew that all of the “mitigation” measures were phoney, futile and extremely destructive. I said so repeatedly to anyone who would listen and to many who wouldn’t. Those who disagreed reminded me of neighbourhood Artie: mistakenly self-assured.
Now that the mitigation has plainly failed, as did Artie in the fight, and as the evidence of the obvious failure and costs of these measures mount, those who previously disrespectfully disagreed with intervention detractors want to run and hide from those, like me, who sensibly opposed them.
When I bring up some destructive manifestation of Coronamania, those who hear me attempt to cut off discussion by saying “Covid’s over.” Having caused and/or aggressively supported a tremendous train wreck, they want to blithely move on and for us critics to forget that any of this nightmare ever happened.
I won’t do that. The stupidity and opportunism have been far too obvious to shrug off. And the memories of the harm done to people I love and, by extension, to hundreds of millions of others, especially the young, are indelible.
Events like the Ukraine and Mid-East wars and the Trump prosecutions have given the media, politicians and the Coronamaniacs cover. These, and other, stories—there are always more hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, homicides, celebrity deaths, pairings and gaffes and sports controversies—have diverted public attention from the vast, deep damage that the Covomanic caused or supported.
Over the past year, even those who developed followings by writing about Coronamania have been transitioning to other topics in order to stay relevant. As do those writers, I also know and care about topics other than Covid. But I won’t diversify my posts’ themes to get more page views. Given its lasting impact on daily life, Coronamania still holds my interest and remains highly relevant. The manic were plainly, predictably wrong and deserve lasting scorn.
Thus, in my daily life, I’ll continue to speak about the Covid interventions’ failures, largely because those who supported these measures want critics like me to memory-hole the pandemic. I’ll also write about Corornmania as long as I can express some new perspective on it. And I’ll wear my anti-mania T-shirt regularly.
This is far from over. Just as Danny wasn’t done with Artie even after beating him up, after the Coronamaniacs’ comprehensive failure, I’m not done with them.
In order to change the subject, the Corona-crazed want me to accept their declaration that continuing to discuss the extreme overreaction manifests “obsession.”
Initially, it’s far beyond ironic that those who completely freaked out about a respiratory virus to the extent that they: hid in their dwellings, washed their hands and disinfected groceries OCD-ily, concealed their faces with blue paper, repeatedly took highly inaccurate tests, were certain that schools should close for 18 months, raptly watched the TV news’s bogus death and case tickers, demanded that those who wouldn’t inject mRNA should lose medical insurance and/or be imprisoned, banned uninjected friends or siblings from holiday gatherings and insisted that the entire world should internalize their mental illness would now call me obsessed.
Coronamaniacs’ own ludicrous obsession with a statistically unscary virus and their complete lack of self-awareness about their gullible panic should compel them to take a decade-long vow of silence on all public matters. Doing so might enable them to develop some badly needed humility and spare the world from more of their foolishness. As convicted felons have historically been, they should also be forbidden to vote.
Covophobic anti-social actions manifested a complete lack of discernment regarding a very simple set of issues and alternatives. It was obvious from Day 1 that the Covid interventions were theatre and would cause immense dislocation without commensurate benefit.
Just as Artie started in with Danny, those who senselessly bought the panic and supported the protocols started this conflict. They were aggressively and dismissively sure they were right. But they were very wrong. Basic reciprocity justifies reminding the Covophobic, for at least three and a half years, how naive or opportunistic they were and of the pain they caused or supported.
But such a period would be far too short. Since when is there a statute of limitations for calling out historical misconduct? In 2017, PBS broadcasted a ten-part series about the Vietnam War, over forty years after the War ended. This series supplemented a thirteen-part 1983 PBS series entitled Vietnam: A Television History. which began a decade after the agreement to end that War.
The History Channel also presented a similarly-themed series. Over a series of post-War decades, Hollywood presented numerous feature films including Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Platoon. Years and decades after the war, major publishers released countless long, and many bestselling, books, e.g.: Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, The Best and the Brightest, A Bright Shining Lie, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect, Fortunate Son, The Long Gray Line, Fire in the Lake, Where the Rivers Ran Backward, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, the Reporting Vietnam anthology and Hue.
I’ve watched all of these TV series and read all of the above-listed books, plus many more. I have a strong interest in, and an enduring memory of, epic government failures, like the Vietnam War and the Corona interventions, that wrecked or shortened the lives of people I know or with whom I identify. Given these devastating effects, these failures must never be forgotten. Nor can those who perpetrated these disasters and lied about them be forgiven; especially since they excuse their own pandemic conduct by reciting The Big Lie that “We didn’t know!”
Except for McNamara’s unavailing mea culpa, all of the Vietnam retrospectives forcefully develop the theme that the War was clearly folly, or worse, from the outset. None of these books suggest that “we couldn’t have known” that the War was foolish from the beginning. To the contrary, all of these retrospectives repeatedly underscore how naive, phony, arrogant, partisan and/or money-driven the decision to enter, and the manner of execution of that War, were.
Same as the Covid “mitigation.” It needs to be remembered for the Scam that it was. We have to offset the campaign of vile revisionism about the reasons for, and effects of, the lockdowns, lockouts, masks, shots and profligate government giveaways.
Moreover, though erstwhile Coronamaniacs might say they’re “done with Covid,” Coronamania isn’t done with them, or the rest of us. The pandemic’s enduring effects: depressed, isolated, undereducated and undisciplined youth, unpaired adults and record childlessness, a trashed economy that has dropped many out of the middle class and made a home unaffordable for most, mRNA shot injuries and general social disorder are too obvious, serious and persistent to ignore. I’ll continue to point out the linkage between these trends and the Covid mitigation. Past is plainly prologue.
In addition to the specific problems caused by those who supported the Covid overreaction, broader themes that reflect and transcend the pandemic bear repeating frequently and durably.
First, as they did for a while after Vietnam, people need to wake up to government’s blatant, longstanding dishonesty. The government seems to lie even more obviously and withholds from the public more information than it did a few decades ago.
Second, the government’s growing tendency to control people’s lives is a very dark trend. Most of the Covid response was decreed via Emergency Declarations and Executive Orders, not legislated. Many of these were plainly, substantively unconstitutional, as well.
Third, during Coronamania, the virtue-signalling Left displayed their overarching smug, foolish groupthink and the destructiveness of their broader sociopolitical agenda. Those who believed that the Covid interventions made sense and overlooked the harm that these measures would cause have poor judgment and over-rely on centralized government. These negative traits extend to many other issues and topics. If NPR, the New York Times or HuffPost are for something, it’s likely a poor idea.
Fourth, the media’s performance and complicity during the pandemic should permanently discredit propagandistic legacy media outlets and websites like Axios, Facebook and Google News. These sources have consistently failed to ask even the most obvious questions, deliberately presented false narratives, shown a glaring lack of objectivity and spewed lies like firehoses.
Fifth, the extreme destruction caused during Covidmania by ostensible experts should deliver a strong blow against expertism. In 2019, Joel Stein’s In Defense of Elitism echoed the widely-held misconception that Americans should defer to those who graduated from big-name universities and/or have advanced decrees because these people are smarter than those who didn’t/don’t. Coronamania showed how hollow this notion is, both specifically and generally. “Experts” be dumb and/or corrupt.
Sixth, aside from the folly of experts and media pundits, widespread censorship has been exposed. During the past three years, as they blatantly lied to the citizenry, media and government have silenced, deplatformed, shadow-banned and maliciously mislabeled truth tellers as “purveyors of misinformation.” Democracy dies in Darkness.
Seventh, the Medical/Hospital/Pharma Complex’s dysfunctional dominion over Western government and these governments’ close linkage to these industries has been exposed to anyone who has paid attention. Addressing the pervasively, plainly false claims regarding, and the misplaced reliance on, Med/Hospital/Pharma’s products is a multi-decade/David versus Goliath project. Two of the most sacred cows in our culture, government and the Medical Industrial Complex have badly damaged the populations that they were supposed to serve.
Thomas Sowell said, “People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right.”
We mitigation critics were plainly, comprehensively right when we said that the Covid interventions were absurd and disastrous. We can’t let the self-important but intellectually bankrupt mitigation mob act like they never messed up as thoroughly as they did or to slink away after having been so consequentially wrong during the past three-and-a-half years. They should be made to wear their mitigation mania like a dunce cap. Permanently.
If you’re around me, or read what I post, you’ll hear my critique until you can’t take it anymore and, as many have since March, 2020, flee from or cancel me. That’s up to you. But I’m a package deal: if you spend time with me or read my posts, you’ll continue to hear about the pandemic. I don’t expect the Covophobic to like my message or me. I don’t care if they don’t. The truth and good judgment matter more to me than anything else one has to offer.
After having been so deeply, consequentially, predictably wrong, the Coronamaniacs deserve not only to be metaphorically beaten down but to be chased as they run away like the mindless, arrogant bullies they were. We must not be distracted. We must stay on task.
Republished from the author’s Substack
