Transcending Polarized Thinking, My Perspectives on COVID, and Politically Incorrect Memes

Before COVID hit, I didn't think too deeply about the shadows on the political left. At the end of 2019, I was writing on alternatives to policing for Project Censored, helping create an ethnic studies class at the high school I worked at, and advocating fiercely for youth and families, primarily Black and Brown, who were impacted by the juvenile hall system.

Although for me, I didn't engage in these issues just because they were liberal in identity politics. I always saw these as basic humanistic values of addressing corruption and seeking justice. With many planets in Libra in my astrology, I've always been passionate about hearing from all sides of an issue and practicing critical and balanced thinking in the face of complexity.

Yet the sole focus on white supremacy, racism, and gender constructs didn't satisfy me when it came to having a deep understanding of the structural forces driving the injustice occurring in our communities and larger society. In fact, the intolerance for dissent and the political correctness of what the liberal party has largely become began to feel like a detraction from real dialogue.

An understanding of the complexity of current social and global issues started unravelling for me when I read writer and counter-cultural philosopher Charles Eisenstein's book, Sacred Economics. He suggests that anytime we want to understand something about the various crises we face, we must ask ourselves "Why?" Why is there a bio-diversity crisis? Why is there a crisis in education, medicine, war, media, energy, health, politics, and more? And when you get down to a couple levels of "Why?", sooner or later you get down to money and the centralization of power.

My education further deepened when I watched The Corporation, which not only shed light on corporate drive for profits at the expense of workers, society, and the environment, but also highlighted the increasing corporate influence on government policies and the distribution of what gets shared (or censored) to the public through our media systems.

From the destruction of our soil and the health of the people due to pesticide use, to wireless technologies causing unprecedented levels of cancer-causing radiation, to the manipulation of public trust in anti-depressants and opioids, I saw how federal agencies like the FDA and the FCC would be captured by special interests like Big Pharma and the Telecom industry while they failed to provide adequate safety testing and health oversight despite public demand. With the War on Terror costing the US $8 trillion and resulting in countless deaths and destruction, I started questioning and following the money with how wars are started and why (thanks Bill Moyers for your courageous work in revealing the continued abuse of democratic values). What I found was a web of lies, secrecy, and violence under the guise of securing our nation from foreign threats. In actuality, these efforts were largely put in place to maintain financial and political dominance at the expense of millions of deaths worldwide. I began to see that the problem wasn't the blue or red party, but the money party of bankers, corporate shareholders, intelligence agencies, and elites that work outside of government and benefit off of pitting the left and right against each other. What better way to unite a country behind special interests than to create an enemy and generate fear among the public?

Time and time again, I would find that many of my left-leaning friends were devoid of interest in discussing these topics. And when COVID hit, I began to deeply question where I fit on the political spectrum.

When COVID news and commentary began to flood our media systems, there were many different perspectives emerging to make sense of this new reality, with reasonable questions and concerns from all sides. Yet just as quickly as it had started, there began to be a narrowing of what was said and what wasn't. I was deeply surprised by the level of censorship and lack of public dialogue on perspectives outside of official narratives around masking, lockdown policies, and eventually vaccinations. In 2020, I did an interview with Rob Williams at University of Vermont to discuss media issues. In the last part of the interview, he questioned the concerning lack of nuance on co-morbid deaths in hospitals of people dying with, not from COVID. And how understanding this inflation of COVID case numbers might ease some of the rampant fear and polarization. He also offered a few examples of countries that didn't shut down their economy, like Sweden and Taiwan, but eventually isolated their most vulnerable populations and were successful at keeping their cases and deaths low. Our video was taken down on Youtube and Vimeo for "spreading misinformation and hate."

I was working at a high school when we went into lockdown. During the year and a half we were sheltering-in-place, two close students of mine ended their life. Mental health related hospitalizations were occurring every week. Gang activity amongst our Latino youth increased. Kids were glued to their screens for hours, not going outside or learning important social development skills needed to function in the world. Civil unrest erupted in the country after George Floyd was murdered, amplifying the violence on the streets and in the media. One of the greatest wealth transfers in history occurred during the pandemic to the 1% as millions lost their jobs. More than two years later, most of schooling has been through the computer screen, increasing the deterioration of community, soul, and creativity in education.

Furthermore, there was hardly any media coverage or government messaging on evidence-based perspectives of nutritional and lifestyle support to enhance the immune system and reduce the severity of a COVID infection. Other forms of prevention and treatment of COVID were resisted and discredited in the media. Doctors were fired for prescribing life-saving medication like Ivermectin, a Nobel-prize winning drug with reliable evidence showing its success in treating people with COVID. Two videos from a US Senate Committee were removed from Youtube on the use of ivermectin for prevention and early treatment of COVID.

[Dr. Pierre Kory] described a just-published study from Argentina in which about 800 health-care workers received ivermectin and 400 didn't. Not one of the 800 contracted Covid-19; 58% of the 400 did. Before being removed from YouTube and other websites, Dr. Kory's opening statement had been viewed by more than eight million people. Unfortunately, government health agencies don't share that interest in early treatment. A year into the pandemic, NIH treatment guidelines for Covid patients are to go home, isolate yourself and do nothing other than monitor your illness. The censors at YouTube have decided for all of us that the American public shouldn't be able to hear what senators heard.

Instead, we were told that the pandemic wouldn't go away until a vaccine was distributed, even though there's now clear evidence showing no significant difference in viral load amongst the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Many doctors and scientists were dehumanized and cancelled for bringing up real concerns related to vaccine safety and data integrity. Many people who did not get vaccinated, including me, were subject to punitive mandates and tribalistic dehumanization from the public. Meanwhile, new developments in Israel, a country that is among the world's highest levels of vaccination for COVID, showed that 60% of the hospitalizations for those with severe COVID were those who were fully vaccinated. How might we have nuanced conversations that address the complexity of immunity and health, instead of "get vaccinated or you'll get really sick and harm others"?

Like many other unvaccinated people, I was mandated to do weekly testing to "prove" I was safe to the community in order to keep my job, even though new developments reveal that PCR tests were contaminated and poorly designed, leading to inconclusive test results across labs in the country.

And while natural immunity was ridiculed and ignored for the first two years, the CDC recently released new data indicating that prior COVID infections provide greater immunity than vaccines, as reported by Project Censored.

Yet despite millions of vaccine injuries and questions of its efficacy that are not being discussed on many independent and corporate media platforms, California recently approved a bill that would allow regulators to punish doctors for spreading "false information" about Covid-19 vaccinations and treatments.

Where is the true investigative journalism that would support open and public debate? And who benefits from keeping us uninformed of the nuances and complexities of COVID vaccines and policies? For example, would a few key Pfizer and Moderna investors become $10 billion richer after the announcement of the Omicron booster if the public really knew of vaccine concerns? And if we were to put trust in our authorities, are they really invested in public health?

As reported by a Project Censored piece that I helped evaluate:

When COVID-19 arrived, a frightened nation turned to two federal health agencies—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for guidance. Now, more than two years later, there are questions about the “regulatory capture” of these agencies—the term used for a form of corruption in which an independent regulatory agency ends up promoting the interests of an industry, profession, or group—and how regulatory capture may have impacted public health policies that have guided the national response to the pandemic.

Some of my friends questioning the official narrative are certain that the pandemic was manufactured, and that the pandemic is part of a larger global elite plan. Given what I've been learning about the history of corruption, secrecy, and manipulation that our country has partaken in, I wouldn't be surprised. Yet I would be very adamant in finding reliable, trustworthy information about it. I am committing to checking things out and not immediately believing something just because it confirms my own biases. Like with any news taboo, there are always going to be speculative claims and conflating of issues that aren't useful to the collective awakening needed for our times.

Every incident of censorship where lots of money is involved is a chance to look deeper and ask critical questions. To engage with people who have different views and build the capacity to stay curious and humble, instead of reactive and fearful. To the extent that we are divided from each other based on polarized, either/or thinking is the extent that corruption can continue right in front of our eyes, since we'll be too distracted blaming and cancelling each other.

What a challenge we are facing to check our assumptions and projections on both sides of the political aisle, especially when we're not getting the information we need to have open dialogue. I do believe that we're all making meaning of these times as best we can, and most of us mean well. I commit to staying open, never losing sight of my love and trust in humanity and the common good.

Maybe one day we'll laugh at all of this.

I'll get it started with these memes.

Let's heal our fear and question authority.

And work to stop the censorship.