“The authoritarianism of the lockdown years must never be forgotten”, writes Lauren Smith. Correct: Forgive, yes (as long as there is real regret, remorse, revocation and repentance). But not forget, lest the descent into tyranny happens all over again, and worse next time. Even faith leaders were pushing the fraud, making themselves shills for big pharma.
In the same vein, here’s Paul Joseph Watson with “oops, sorry!“.
Addendum (02/11/2022): Here‘s a good take on this article by Igor Chudov:
How interesting. The Atlantic is one of the most forward-looking and yet curated publications and they do not publish rubbish and random musings. And now they have a prominent author asking for “amnesty” and forgiveness.
[…]
The author surely did not publish this Atlantic article out of honest-to-goodness concern for the nebulous advocates of “bleach injections”. She wants some other acts — and some other players — to be forgiven instead. Prof. Oster is coy about who those people are. I am sure that she is asking for amnesty for our “Covid response leaders”.
She published her article, before the midterms, because she is concerned about disappointed people starting to ask questions. Questions, such as
- Why is my vaccine not working for me?
- Why was I/my friend/my coworker injured by the vaccine and ignored by the medical community?
- Why am I sicker than before?
- Why am I having multiple Covid infections after being vaccinated?
- I was told that my vaccines “stop transmission”, whereas the authorities knew they don’t
- Why did unaccountable private interests take over the entirety of public response?
- Why did the above private interests make billions of dollars, while my business went bankrupt?
- Why was I lied to by the TV and media, while the truth was suppressed by Internet giants profiting from the pandemic?
Emily surely does not address such questions, but she is no doubt aware that they are being asked publicly and even brought up during the elections.
She is probably worried because she understands that these questions if asked and investigated, may lead to serious consequences. Hence, her call for amnesty.
Addendum (03/11/2022): Karen Kwiatkowski has written a great response. Excerpts:
However, contempt is not something that can be “forgiven” by the formerly contemptible. Their contempt for us has nothing to do with us, and it isn’t our problem. Their contempt for us should be eliminated – not by our “forgiveness” which is irrelevant – but by their own internal change, their own decisions, individually, that we are at least their equals, and quite possibly, in the case of the COVID policy fiasco, examples they could and should have followed, rather than condemned.
There are some steps that, if taken, would make me believe that they are serious. Oster has tossed out a veiled and somewhat worried request for a kind of “forgiveness” and tellingly she also used the word “amnesty.” She knows what we all know: crimes were committed, and citizen trust in governing institutions and their university/media/industry cohorts has been broken and will not be easily restored.
I’d like to see a 12 step movement embraced and acted upon by people like Emily. Addicts, like the The bullying anti-science left wing are addicts – they gave over personal responsibility to think and act soberly and fairly, to the thing they are addicted to – government centralized power and their own comfortable sense of superiority over people who disagree with them politically. To this end, I recommend that Emily Oster and all of her peers and allies:
- Admit they were powerless over their knee-jerk acceptance of government messaging, that their lives had become unmanageable, and yet they remained arrogant.
- Come to believe a Power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity – and that power is not the federal government or its associated bureaucracies and lackey institutions.
- Made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understand God.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves, and their actions, beliefs and behaviors over the past 3 years.
- Admitted to God, to themselves and to another human being the exact nature of their wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked God to remove their shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons they have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when they were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve their conscious contact with God as they understood God, praying only for the knowledge of God’s will for them and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, they tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all their affairs.
I’d be happy if they simply looked into half of these 12 – choose any six steps and go for it. But I imagine that none of these steps is what Emily and her ilk had in mind.
Maybe when their icons are sitting in jail, having lied publicly one too many times, and having participated in mass murder, they will recognize their addiction, and seek to make a personal change. With Covid, this group of almost a hundred million Americans demonstrated a thousand days of collapses in critical thinking, a thousand days of lockstep unwillingness to question authority, and a thousand days of animalistic rage and aggression toward those who displayed a healthy distrust of large, nontransparent and unaccountable organizations and institutions.
So far, none of this is being addressed. No doubt we will suffer these kinds of freedom-destroying government-driven movements again, be the crisis a man-made disaster, a false flag, or an act of God. Next time, however, the other hundred thousand of contemptibles among us might not take it lying down.
“Bionic Mosquito” is in even less of a mood of forgiveness:
Returning to Oster.
We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself.
That was very scientific. Homemade masks. I wonder what surgeons and epidemiologists thought about that before March 2020?
It’s bad enough that the parents in this family were deluded, what they did to their children was horrendous:
Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”
Someone’s dad should have decked the other child’s dad.
These precautions were totally misguided. … But the thing is: We didn’t know.
Bullsh!#. We did know. Those telling you to mask and social distance knew that they were lying. Countless pre-stupidity peer-reviewed studies were clear: masking by amateurs with pretend masks (let alone homemade masks) was useless – and even harmful – when it came to dealing with airborne viruses.
We knew that anyone younger than seventy years old with no co-morbidities was at virtually zero risk of serious complications. We knew that continuing in school was the best option for young people. We knew that the virus (such as it was) travelled equally well in both strip clubs and churches, but only one of these was closed. We knew when politicians and other leaders went to restaurants or hair salons without masking while we were all forced into a face diaper that it was a lie. We knew that these modern jabs were based on science that failed every test before. We knew that forcing the decision of jab or job on individuals was both immoral and corrupt.
We knew. And so did those who said otherwise.
And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong.
And on every topic, the people most listened to were always wrong, and those who were cancelled were (almost) always right. This latter group wasn’t made up of just loons like me; hundreds of prominent and world-renowned doctors and scientists were cancelled because they didn’t agree with MSNBC, CNN, or “the science.” Go back and read the Great Barrington Declaration (as mild as it is), written in October 2020 and signed initially by almost fifty doctors and scientists and currently by almost one million individuals.
They knew. But Collins and Fauci and others worked to crush this attempt at minimal rational pushback.
Addendum (04/11/2022): Kit Knightly has a different take on the whole thing. He thinks it’s not a true request for amnesty but instead “more narrative reinforcement”:
Rather than asking for amnesty they are offering one…to those covid skeptics who have found two and a half years of being on the outside looking in too exhausting to carry on. A compromise.
If you pretend we didn’t mean any harm, we’ll forgive you for telling (partial) truth about us.
And, should any forgiveness or peaceful accord be achieved, we – you reading this, me writing it and any other sinners who won’t repent – are not included.
A fact Ms Oster is at pains to point out:
We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation.
Yes – she means us.
Naturally, this amnesty will never extend to us. We are heretics beyond salvation.
It’s about the fence sitters and half-doubters.
The ones who still have one foot inside the establishment and are looking, desperately, for an excuse to edge all the way back inside and who can be persuaded to accept a cozy little fudge.
Addendum (05/11/2022)
Notably, Ms. Oster’s plea for amnesty and forgiveness, showcased in The Atlantic, omits any discussion of accountability for what amounts to serious crimes against the public. A whole lot of people deserve to be indicted for killing and injuring millions of people. At the heart of her plea is the excuse that “we didn’t know” official Covid policy was so misguided. That’s just not true, of course, and is simply evidence of the thinking class’s recently-acquired allergy to truth. The part she left out of her petition for pandemic amnesty is: we were only following orders.
Addendum (07/11/2022): The responses just come flooding in. Here’s another one: this one by Mark Oshinskie. Excerpts:
As it’s based on at least six false premises, this request for “amnesty” falls flat.
To begin with, Oster slyly proposes a reciprocal exchange of mercy among people on both sides of the Covid “mitigation” debate whom, in her view, all made mistakes. But those who opposed the Covid interventions didn’t make mistakes. Coronamania opponents knew that all of these measures would fail and would cause vast, deep harm. We said so repeatedly and at the outset. We dissidents don’t need, or seek, forgiveness. Thus, despite Oster’s proposal, no equitable exchange of blame is possible here. There’s no justice in, or logic to, mutual forgiveness.
[…]
Those who supported LSMTVs [lockdowns/school closures, mask mandates, testing and injections (PwG)] have caused lasting harm to peoples’ physical and mental health and caused unemployment and inflation that has permanently impoverished many Americans [and people in other nations (PwG)]. In order to understand how these problems arose, government mismanagement must be long-remembered and the architects of these policies should be publicly identified. Child psychologists talk about exposing children to the consequences of their behavior. Those who supported the Covid interventions should have to confront—both now and in the future—the consequences of their actions, including but not limited to, damage to their intellectual reputations. As Coronamania has gone on for 32 months and as public dialogue about Covid policy has been discouraged and thus, strictly unofficial and informal, it’s unreasonable to limit the duration of any public comment period regarding all of the harm caused. The river of public criticism should be allowed to flow indefinitely.
[…]
I bring up the failures of the Covid interventions with everyone I meet. They hate to hear it. Thus, even though they used to enjoy spending time with me, many now avoid me. Most of those with whom I formerly communicated only via e-mail seem to have blocked my messages; they’re unwilling to engage in dialogue. Now that they see that all of the Covid interventions they supported have failed, they want to slink away and pretend that the pain and loss they caused over the past 32 months hasn’t happened. This is unacceptably asymmetrical and shows a lack of integrity. This profound, opportunistically-caused harm can’t simply be memory-holed without a reckoning.
[…]
Sixthly, forgiveness is not possible without contrition. Neither Oster, nor the government, nor the other Covid intervention backers, will admit that not only were they wrong but that they demanded that everyone obey their destructive behavioral directives to stay at home, mask up, test and inject. The past 32 months did not merely entail differences of opinion. Many supported various mandates. Resisters were vilified and punished. As Eddie Vedder sang, “Some words, once spoken, can’t be taken back.”
[…]
Assuming she’s not just trolling and pursuing clicks, why did Oster write this essay? She doesn’t seek a formal pardon, such as a legislature or a court might provide. Rather, her piece feels like a trial balloon wishfully floating the notion that any Covid intervention damage was just misapplied earnestness. It’s an effort to convince herself that she, and the others who imperiously wrecked so many lives, are good, smart people.
But after all that she and her counterparts have said and done, I think Oster and her ilk lack self-awareness and that her balloon deserves to fall from the sky.
Addendum (09/11/2022): Here‘s Del Bigtree with a strong response. He basically says, without true repentance, there can be no forgiveness.
Addendum (10/11/2022): The California based Unity Project writes on Robert Malone’s substack:
The Dilemma of the Unvaccinated – We won’t forget. They celebrated our deaths and danced on our graves
[…]
There are endless examples of hatred and contemptible acts towards the unvaccinated over the past two years, but to relish in their death is abhorrent. The data and information are now clear that the vaccines did not work as promised and the propaganda machine was lying. Even the CDC admits there is no difference in guidance for vaccinated and unvaccinated.
So, what are the unvaccinated to do?
DON’T be spiteful, DON’T forget and DON’T stop asking questions!
One of the first questions we need to ask, and a concession to be made from the “Pandemic Amnesty” camp, needs to be around whether or not the young and healthy people suddenly dying, have been vaccinated. This should not be taboo, and it should be for the greater scientific community to debate and learn from.
We know now all-cause mortality rates are up, health agencies are now normalizing SADS (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome) and Myocarditis, while blaming deaths of healthy young adults on the side effects of COVID.
To call a truce and work together for answers, the COVID-19 vaccine must be a factor. It’s not gruesome to ask if someone was vaccinated when they died suddenly and for unknown causes. The answer will get us all closer to the truth, potentially save lives, and know where the line is when the next fear-driven propaganda event tries to divide and destroy us.
So, to the hateful mob waving a white flag, please remember…
We WON’T celebrate your deaths, we WON’T wish harm on you, but we WON’T forget that you did.
Dr. Paul Elias Alexander is in a much less forgiving mood:
You beasts came after me, hounded me, pounded me, slandered me, made me lose my income, cancelled me, went after McCullough, Wolf, Oskoui, Kulldorff, Ladapo, Tenenbaum, Trozzi, Hoffe, Payne, Kulvinder Gill, Hodkinson, Jeff Tucker of Brownstone, Bridle, Risch, Atlas, Bhattacharya et al. Why? Good law abiding people, smart, God fearing, nation loving. Lawful. Raising families. All we were, were contrarians, skeptics, seeking to share the complete information to best inform people for you were lying to them. Deceiving them. You with the government officials. You sick dogs! Yes, I call you dogs for that is what you were, rabid ‘road roaming’ dogs in heat, you hurt good people, damaged their lives and names and want to talk amnesty? Without payment and punishment? Never! You hurt hundreds of millions of innocent populations, denying early treatment and forcing, mandating a harmful untested vaccine onto them, just so they could put bread on the table. And you bitches want amnesty? Phu*k no!