Jill Domschot

…the more they stay the same. This is true because there is a pattern to creation. There is a pattern to human behavior and human endeavors, and to God’s symbology and design. Unexpected consequences are only unexpected to those who can’t or refuse to acknowledge the patterns.

But, yes, this particular post was inspired by a more specific concept: the more Protestants try not to be Catholic, the more they resemble Catholics. I’ve been mentally collecting a list for a while, ever since a Protestant worship service in which one of the church members felt inspired by the holy spirit to pray over bottles of water before sprinkling the congregation with it. So…uh, holy water? This happens at various Masses, too — except, unsurprisingly, the Catholic church doesn’t allow the average layperson to bless the water and sprinkle it over the people. But it’s still a natural religious practice because it’s reminiscent of baptism and the transformation of water into something more, something that can cleanse our souls.

Years ago, we briefly attended an SBC church that had a door-sized plaque with “Christian” commandments, such as, “I solemnly swear never to touch alcohol.” The entirety of it read like a creed of extra-biblical beliefs mixed with biblical ones, despite that Baptist churches don’t have creeds. If most Protestant churches don’t have giant plaques on their walls, they do indeed have creeds on their websites, called “statements of faith.” They generally aren’t that different from the Apostle’s or Nicene creeds. This makes sense, as creeds are like lines in the sand. They define what it means to be a Christian; they protect the faith from heresies that lead to destruction. We humans need parameters. In fact, God has given parameters to us from the get-go, knowing we would stray from them and giving them to us anyway.

Every year, fervent believers renew their relationships with God through penance such as fasting from certain foods and activities. Surely, that one is only for Catholics…? No, it’s really not. Despite that Protestants do not believe in works-based salvation, they understand that certain works are good for our souls. Consequently, every year I hear of more Protestant denominations who engage in a yearly Daniel fast in the month of January, as though they have now taken up their own church calendar. Sometimes it’s instead a fast from sugar or social media; other times, it’s a strict water fast. We instinctively know that a life of ease separates us from God. This is why I’m 100% unsurprised that Protestants have taken up this practice.

Speaking of church calendars, Protestants also conceded to Christmas ages ago. Go back and read William Bradford on how condescending the Protestant attitude used to be towards Catholics and Christmas. I would recommend reading Bradford’s own words if you don’t believe me that Christmas was looked down upon in the world outside liturgical Christianity. Yet, still, they caved because, in addition to deprivation, humans also need a right celebration in season, and what is better than celebrating the birth of the savior?

Back to solemnity, though, let’s talk about confession. It hasn’t escaped my notice that the latest catchphrase in Protestantism is “accountability partner.” An accountability partner is the person that one confesses sins to, especially those sins that are addictive, such as alcoholism and pornography and cynicism*. Humans are prideful creatures, as I’m sure you know from personal experience. It’s far too easy to hold our sins close and pretend we are repenting when we’re not. And then we repeat the same pattern of giving in to temptation, feeling guilty, crying out to God for relief, and then giving into temptation again. Vocalizing our sins to another human can disrupt this pattern. Also, another human can pray for us. [Confession to a priest is quite different, though, isn’t it? I’m not going to explain why right now. This post is already too long….]

I have to admit that I got to thinking about writing this post last Sunday after going to Protestant worship with my husband. They quite casually handed out little shrink-wrapped grape juice and wafer cups to all who entered the church, and then later, had the gall to lecture the congregation on taking it unworthily without examining conscience first. There was a distinct feeling of discomfort in the room after the pastor said his piece. And I have to admit it really bothered me, too. Why eschew the sacraments, and then attempt to hold them dear as a last ditch effort to hold back anarchy? It’s like never discipling children and then shouting at them when they’re out of control and ready to burn down the house and everyone in it.

Ultimately, what this all comes down to is structure. I’ve been known to laugh a lot…to take things lightly that other people take seriously. But the truth is, we all need to have appropriate seriousness for the things that matter. Our souls need it. Our churches need it. And we also need to have appropriate humility that we don’t know everything. The things of the past that we think would be good to dismantle end up leaving us without necessary structure, and so we recreate what we tore down and imagine our efforts are uniquely inspired.

*cynicism in the modern sense

I find that the English “nay” sounds much better in the above construction. But alas, I wrote the title last night while falling asleep to Conjunto Primavera songs, and my brain reverted to Spanish. You see, I didn’t even get past the title. That was how tired I was. Speaking of King James’ era English, which many post-literates find difficult to read, the corollary time period in Spanish makes for very easy reading. Cervantes is easier to read than Borges, and they are both easier to read than this modern Spanish romantic comedy I’m still hacking away at. Just to give you an idea of why, the main characters are still sitting on an airplane 65 pages into the plot, which is supposed to be set on a singles cruise. And so. They banter a lot and don’t like each other, and the female se puso como un tomate every few paragraphs. I fear that, pronto, estará cubierta con aderezo para ensaladas. Why oh why did I purchase a romantic comedy? I thought it would be light and simple. I stand corrected.

But I digress because I am the second type of person of the two, nay three. The first type is focused on a single skill. In an article at Vox Popoli some time ago now, Vox quoted an anecdote Garrison Keillor had of Chet Atkins, in which Keillor asked Atkins if he should take up the guitar. Atkins advised him not to do it because the world didn’t need another mediocre guitarist. Keillor did one thing really well, create monologues, and there was no reason for him to shift his focus to another skill. Keillor took the advice and was glad he did. Vox makes a good point when he passes this advice along to Scott Adams: The world doesn’t need another mediocre political commentator, Scott … You’re a great cartoonist, one of the greatest ever. Stick with the cartoons. Unfortunately, I don’t think Adams will take this advice, as he’s not a single-focus person. These are people who become masters at an art or other trade due to their singular drive. Adams is, instead, the type of person who can take a stack of mediocre skills and put them together to create one successful skill. As he himself has said, he wasn’t a great comedian or artist or businessman, but he was skilled just enough at enough disciplines to bring it all together into one package. And now we have Dilbert, which is honestly funny, even though it’s not great art.

I hate to admit it, but it’s true: I’m not a single-focus person, either, and I never will be. I have ADD. On a good day, I follow multiple hobbies and interests and work multiple freelance jobs, one in which I teach a combination of phonics and algebra (if not history and science). I complain a lot about having to teach without the help of teacher keys (I’m a tutor for any subject at any grade level), but I can’t imagine having a better job. Scott Adams stacked skills and found success, and I might not ever get there. And I realized at some point that I don’t care. The thought of a life without pursuing multiple disciplines bores me to no end. The difference between me and Scott Adams is I don’t need to bring all my mediocre skills to the world and, hence, open myself up to the subsequent censure. I will never, for example, post videos of myself playing the accordion or singing Spanish songs at full volume. No indeed, only my family and neighbors have to experience that onslaught. I do publish my books, though. Even as a jack-of-all-trades, I’ve poured most of my efforts into writing. So, censure, critique! Bring it on!

There are two types of people, the scattered jack-of-all-trades and the singularly focused master. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a master. I’ve wondered, but I’m bored just imagining it. Therefore, it’s not bound to happen, though there is a remote possibility I discover that one interest above all and apply myself to it fully…. Meanwhile, I will assuredly never be the third type of person. The third does not even bear thinking about. The third is the person who comes home from an eight-hour shift and zones out on Netflix or Facebook. There is nothing wrong with an eight-hour workday. I’ve worked those jobs in my lifetime. Rather, the horror is to be found in disengaging from the world, becoming uninterested and compliant in order to keep the peace. At least Scott Adams isn’t that, despite being wrongheaded at times.

But what about the woman who is bound to become a salad? What of her? I have no idea! Her plane won’t land! ¡Híjole! as New Mexicans say. Or, as I often hear shouted in Mexican tunes, ¡Que bárbaros!

This post was inspired by InsanityByte’s* blog yet again. She inspires sometimes. She at least never leaves me feeling neutral on topics of interest. I wasn’t exactly sure how poetry was related to the Religious Right (see title) after having read it, but there seems to be a sense that western Christianity is like a shiny bauble, all outward show, with no art and no depth enough to keep its members, let alone to write poetry.

As I mentioned in her comments, there really is no collective western Christianity. A Southern Baptist does not speak for a Quaker, nor does a Quaker really know what’s up with those Seventh Day Adventists. Some of these churches barely eek out enough to pay rent on a strip mall hole in the wall: there is really no show to be had. If we want to talk Catholicism, poor diocese end up sharing priests, forcing one overworked man to give Mass at multiple churches, multiple times a week. Meanwhile, megachurches boast thousands of members and worship leaders who wear $1000 sneakers (someone did an exposé on this; it’s a real phenomenon for worship leaders).

But if there’s one thing all human institutions share around the world, it’s the inclination towards corruption and exploitation of people and funds. It’s found in churches, schools, government offices — wherever people with authority are found. Sometimes, the more petty the authority, the more corrupt. That’s why we’re admonished by Jesus not to follow hirelings but to follow Him instead, as he is the Good Shepherd who will never abandon his sheep, not even those in western Christianity who chase after baubles.

While I sympathize with people who abandon churches because they find them corrupt and shallow, I already know that for every one person who has left over unaddressed trauma, there are several more who left because living by God’s standards is too difficult. They want to shack up with their gay or straight partners. They want to murder their babies. They want to eat steak while collecting welfare (envy is rife in our society). They want to live how they want, and far from just accepting illicit lifestyles, many church congregations still say, no, absolutely not; you can’t be a member in good standing and live that way. And so they leave the “hatefulness” of Christianity behind.

This is related to poetry, and I’m about to show you how. You see, there were evil forces at work in this country all throughout the 20th century. Forces that worked to destroy the family unit through feminism, homosexuality, no-fault divorce, and abortion rights. This is real and documented: these were the avenues communist chapters sought to destroy our society. And yes, they really did get together in chapters to plan how they would accomplish this. These people infiltrated schools from elementary through post grad, tearing down beautiful traditions and replacing them with garbage. This applies to the arts and languages, though it is much harder to do in the sciences and math. No, it was much easier to bring in mass secularism so that God could no longer be the bedrock, the cornerstone, or the inspiration of scientific exploration, with annoying and disingenuous appeals to we study science, not religion.

Now, there are people who snidely claim the religious right doesn’t do poetry. No, of course, they don’t because it was coopted by the left, who queered every historic work of literature after dismantling it through a Marxist and Freudian lens. Then they determined that rules pertaining to language and grammar were snooty, not for true Bohemian artist types, who ought to have no restrictions placed on them. Stream of consciousness puked on the page and then workshopped in poetry classes in universities everywhere became the true meaning of poetry, along with subjective advice akin to “I’m just not feeling that third word from the right. Maybe give it a unique spelling?” As an aside, when I brought home a stack of poems from my first Freshman poetry class, my dad snarkily remarked, “I guess there are no virgins in that class,” as — if you could discern their meaning at all — sex was a popular subject.

It’s no wonder the religious right doesn’t write poetry! This is, of course, not correct. The religious right writes praise songs, which are sadly infected with the same destruction of the arts: stream of consciousness, tiny vocabulary, no punctuation, no meter, no rhyming. These songs are impossible to sing. They can hardly be called poetry, but neither can anything the left writes. There’s a reason society has all but abandoned poetry, except the kind in popular songs, where cheap rhymes and universal feelings about love still occur with regularity. Mediocre as pop songs may be, they provide a framework that the rest of the arts and literature dropped like hot coal.

Given all of this cultural destruction, the fact that western Christianity is still standing at all is a miracle that only God could be responsible for. The walls are still there. Biblical morality is still preached in pockets. In very traditional churches, they might even sing vestiges of Amazing Grace, a hymn written long before the destruction of poetry, a hymn inspired by an extremely religious-right movement to end chattel slavery. In fact, you’ll find much of the best historical English poetry was written by the religious “right”, despite the corruption of the Catholic or Anglican churches in England or, later, of the Puritan or Separatist churches in the US. Sure, the right can write poetry. Some still do. I do. Phil Wickham does (he’s a good modern songwriter). You’ll find them if your goal is to search through the post-postmodern ashes for signs that God, his church, and beauty still exist.

*Just to be clear, this is a response inspired by Insanity’s post, not an attack on hers because I get everything she’s saying and have had similar thoughts myself.

We had a party tonight watching The Lawrence Welk Show. Yes, that is what passes for a party at our house. America was a better place when variety shows like this were popular. I don’t really know that; I wasn’t alive when the show aired — or we didn’t have a TV at that time (it ran through the early 80s; I just checked). I can only imagine that our culture was better when the population appreciated brass bands, trained singing, full orchestras and, of course, polkas and similar played on an accordion.

I noticed that Mr. Welk had a distinguishable accent, not purely American, which made me curious, as I had thought he was born here. Well, he was, but it was to German immigrants who lived in a German-speaking community in North Dakota. He, in fact, didn’t speak English until he was an adult. There used to be many of these communities in the US; if our country had chosen an official language at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, it might have been German. As it went, we never did choose an official language. English simply became the default, probably because it was the language originally used in federal government bodies and documents. For the record, though, all the hoity-toity English-only types who put their noses in the air and claim that early immigrants went out of their way to be ‘Murican and learn English aren’t exactly correct.

I found Welk’s biography curious. He was from a farm family who started out their lives in North Dakota living in an upturned wagon — those were the kinds of hardships Americans used to face. Welk was the sixth of eight children, and despite the hardships, Welk asked his father to buy him a $400 accordion. His father bought it for him and expected him to work it off on the farm. And like a good young man, he did just that. But I want you to put that price into perspective. Four-hundred dollars a hundred years ago is comparable to five-thousand in our day. That’s a lot of money for farmers. Did you know the accordion I would like to buy would cost me approximately $5000? That means quality accordions have maintained their value according to inflation. I currently own a much cheaper accordion; it’s a Hohner Panther, which is considered a decent student accordion. Someday, I hope to purchase a better one. Hey, I’d do farmwork to pay for it!

My husband noted the people on The Lawrence Welk Show still knew how to dance. They were cutting the rug doing polkas and waltzes; naturally, I told him it was because Welk was Catholic. I was teasing him when I said that, but it turns out it’s true! He grew up in a German and a Catholic community. He kept his faith throughout his life. He was apparently very devout and as an adult went to Mass daily to receive the Eucharist. All of this information, by the way, can be found on his Wiki page. I did no great research to write this post. However, the cursory look at his biography has piqued my curiosity, and if there’s a longer book available on him, I will find it. Biography and history are two of my favorite genres. Unfortunately, I buy biographies wherever I go, and I still have unread ones sitting by my bed. There’s something like serendipity to finding weird thrift store biographies I never would have thought to look for on Kindle. And sometimes, TV shows inspire me to seek more, too….

Speaking of, there’s a great movie out there called The Polka King. What a story that is! It’s a true story about a Polish accordion king, maybe not such a good Catholic because he ended up in prison for fraud. Just one of his schemes was to dupe Catholics into going on Vatican tours with promises of meeting the Pope. Even though he was a shyster, he still managed to get an audience with Pope John Paul II…to this day, nobody knows quite how he did it. I really recommend this film. Jack Black stars in it and, while Black is clearly demonic, he can be a great actor.

You see, I’m not obsessed with just Mexican music. I love all manner of accordion wunderkinds. There is a good German word for you. The truth is that Mexicans are simply superior at packaging the best parts of music into amazing songs. Mexicans have dramatic or intentionally flat vocals combined with goofiness and, often, barely constrained chaos. There is nothing that fulfills my vision of the world better than those descriptors. They are the descriptors I’d give to my own artistic vision when I write books: goofy, dramatic, droll, and nearly chaotic plot. When I die, please engage an accordionist to play in that manner at my funeral. Oh, and please, please, have dancing. Thank you.

*And a Polish guy too

**I realized belatedly that that last phrase looks attached to “what I want at my funeral” and not to the asterisk in the title. Have a Pole at my funeral, I don’t care. Or a Yugoslavian. I hear they are good accordionists, too.

This post was inspired by some thoughts I was having yesterday, as well as this post by Insanity Bytes. I have to admit to having kept my distance from the MRA/Alpha-game world for a while. Still, if you are at all conservative and write Sci Fi, it’s almost impossible to avoid. And in fact, that’s why I ran across this world in the first place — I write spec fic and am conservative in my values. Upon first inspection, it sounds like a net positive that men should fight for their rights in a post-feminist world (this is also how feminism continues to be sold to the masses). Feminism has been very destructive to the relationship between men and women, to families, to the economy…. I could go on. But standing up for men and their fundamental rights as humans is really not what the MRA world is all about. It is about raising the male ego by instructing men to treat women like trash. Unfortunately, this world has infected Christian circles, as well. It was rife in homeschool circles when I was also a homeschooler; this is why I experienced how toxic it was firsthand.

Like any popular movement, it goes through fads and has its own catchphrases and assumptions. One of those that has not completely died out is the one in which females are solipsistic. This might seem odd at first, being that solipsism has its place in the scientific process. How is it, then, an insult? Solipsism is using one’s own experiences to process information: the five senses, in other words. However, it also has a negative connotation when a person cannot see beyond the limitations of their experiential capacities. Women are indeed guilty of this; they often paint the world from their own perspective and project their issues on others. They hide what they’re doing by calling it empathy. They will also filter others’ experiences through their own.

But let’s be honest. Men are just as solipsistic as women are. They just don’t hide behind fancy terms such as empathy. Instead, they determine what is truth from their own perspective and make a lot of noise about how objective they are. Look, this might come across as sexist, but seriously, menfolk — yeah, I’m talking to you — at least female solipsists are attempting to understand others by their experiences in the world. I don’t see that in too many men, especially regarding the thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. of women. Men are also quite apt at ignoring the needs of people in their care: I’m not hungry, so why would anyone else be?

Both of these solipsistic responses stem from the actual fundamental difference between men and women: women are nurturers and men are there to toughen up their children or underlings at work. Therefore, I don’t want to be too hard on men. They are operating out of an essential masculine quality, but like all human attributes, it can go terribly wrong. If women are emotional projectors and/or manipulators, men can be downright narcissistic in how they approach others. And their narcissism can be truly damaging to those around them. If I had a penny for every time a gung-ho Christian man ignored the voice of his wife…well, I wouldn’t be very happy because there are too many hurting families that each penny represents.

The internet world has brought to the fore so many creeps, creeps who believe women are what’s fundamentally wrong with the world (and to be fair, creeps who think white men are the only problem…but that’s another subject). They are in every chat group, ready to speak or meme their “objective” truths, such as, “If only women understood that men talk to other men when they want an interesting conversation.” Or memed, their objectivity looks about like this:

I’m sure you’ve seen these memes…that don’t seem to go away, no matter how old and overused they are. If anything is an indication of male solipsism, they are it. My only hope for humans of both sexes and their inability to assess the world appropriately is that they grow up. Or most do. Solipsistic female projection can become self-analysis that ironically helps them have true empathy; and solipsistic male narcissism can start to look outward, allowing men to truly listen to others.

Because I only salvaged two years’ worth of posts, I’ve lost most of my old silly thoughts on our New Year’s songs. Thus, I’ll do a quick recap: Every year we take a New Year’s song. Or should I say, we accept the one that’s given to us? For years, we would go to Albuquerque on New Year’s Eve and have dinner out and then go to a movie. The Hobbit and LOTR films carried us through many of those years. Long story short, we were usually driving when it struck midnight, and whatever was playing on the radio became our New Year’s song. As Albuquerque is no longer a close drive, we’ve had to find our New Year’s songs in other ways. One year, I think it was 2017, midnight rolled over just as the credits rolled on a movie we were streaming; the song that played during the credits was Europe’s The Final Countdown. A delightful song, and it was much fun to consider what it meant to our lives. Would we be going to Venus? Would the aliens there accept us? These were important questions to consider.

Going back a few years farther to New Year’s 2015, our song was Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger. The funny thing is when we’d gone Christmas shopping a couple of weeks earlier, we’d browsed a giant mall Big 5 store, and I’d marveled at the nice exercise clothes; mine were in virtual rags because it didn’t matter to me what I looked like when I was fulfilling my OCD urges to exercise. Looking at the price tags on these goods, I was startled by how expensive workout gear was. I suppose some people need expensive clothing to look fabulous at the gym…which is another strange concept to me. Huh, the gym is simply not practical when I can do perfectly good pushups on my Pilates mat. Another long story short, my husband quipped that I was like Rocky in the first film and had the Eye of the Tiger. That was why wearing rags didn’t matter to me. It was amusing when that became our New Year’s song.

I don’t like thinking about 2015 much. It was seven long years ago, and it was the year we moved to Roswell. It was a time of too much stress and too little writing on my part. I felt my soul disappearing down the drain every time I went to work at a job I hated, only to come home and stay up a few more hours to finish a backlog of editing projects I’d taken on. I was working sixteen-hour days and living in a ghetto apartment filled with catty welfare moms, despite that I had a perfectly good house in the River Valley (yes, I’m sure I was a big complainer, too). It took me a few years, in fact, to finish The Minäverse that I’d started in 2014 and to continue taking classes and playing the accordion. It took me another few years to be okay with Roswell because Roswell brought me face to face with a culture I didn’t get along with — Texas redneck culture.

Fast forward to New Year 2022, and we were listening to a streaming eighties’ channel (I would’ve chosen Mexican music, but you know how it is…); what do you think came on at the stroke of midnight? If you guessed Eye of the Tiger, you are correct. Only, I don’t like to think of what that song entails. Having a focused eye is one thing, but think about the symmetry of this song playing for us this year: it’s been seven years since we moved to Roswell — we always make big changes in our lives every seven years — and we plan to move back to the River Valley this year, as well. How…? Why…? The New Year’s song is a silly little thing we do instead of resolutions. Do you think maybe God has a sense of humor? I wonder sometimes. I mean, I know he does, or we humans wouldn’t be so inclined towards a desire to laugh. We are made in his image, after all.

The only thing I ask of this year is that I don’t work sixteen-hour days editing and being a customer service representative. I’m not cut out for customer service, even though I will always be a workaholic to some extent. By the way, another funny symmetry just occurred to me. I actually did make a New Year’s resolution in 2015. I resolved to read a book a week because I’d largely stopped reading for fun due to editing so many books. Anyway, I made a resolution this year to read a book a week in Spanish. Yes, in Spanish. I’m currently reading a frou-frou romance because I didn’t want to start with sophisticated vocabulary. It turns out the book was written in Spain Spanish, and thus, the vocabulary is still a bit out of my reach. I’ve always studied Mexican Spanish. Much of it is the same, obviously, but there are still a number of words I have to look up. Also, I’ve never learned the vosotros conjugations. Oh, well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Here’s to having the Eye of the Tiger. Most of my goals are already daily habits: exercise, study Spanish and Finnish, write and edit my books, play the accordion. Right now, I’m working on the PenTriagon sequel, editing the Breakin’ Good book, and I’m learning a song on the accordion called La Del Moño Colorado. It has a simple accordion part, but most of the songs I learn do. I’m no great musician. Oh, hey, why not leave you with that song below instead of an old eighties’ song? Watch the whole video because the dancing is truly amazing. If it’s one thing I despise most about our American Protestant culture, it’s giving up codified couple dancing. Protestant men can’t or won’t dance. Such a shame.

…of media manipulation and gaslighting. I know: it’s what they do. They do it all year, in every season. They don’t seem to have one special holiday of adoration to their Lord Satan (oh, come on! It’s a joke…kind of. Who is the father of lies?). But, heavens, the doozies I’ve seen in the last twenty-four hours! They must feel they need to ring in the New Year loudly y con fuerza.

Does anyone else find the gaslighting frustrating? I do. And it’s not merely gaslighting. It’s double-speak. It’s spin. It’s speculation treated as fact. All of that could be considered gaslighting, if it flies in the face of the reality people are actually experiencing. No matter what you call it, it falls under the umbrella of deceit.

Last night, I found myself chuckling when I read a headline calling night sweats a “very strange” symptom of Omicron. The media does like to engage in “much ado about nothing,” except they’ve been using Covid to push a fear narrative for over two years now, and it’s no longer funny. So, I’m not sure why I was chuckling. I guess absurdity still strikes my funny bone. If they don’t have anything else, it will be oh no, night sweats. At least I know it’s nothing to worry about if that’s all they can come up with.

Later, I read what I thought would be an informative article about blood type and Rh factor and whether they play a role in fighting Covid. But I gave up when this particular “science” article speculated that the reason countries without as much access to medical care have fared better with Covid was their underreporting of deaths and positive cases. Okay, I can see that as perhaps part of the problem. Or part of the solution, as I don’t believe our tests or our death statistics are even remotely accurate. I have many, many reasons for doubting them…which would take me another article to write about. Another frustrated rant. Another B-girl fest. I’m very good at the last in the list, if nothing else.

On the other hand, I believe that we’ve had far, far too many Covid deaths due to our access to medical care. Speaking of gaslighting, we in wealthy westernized nations have been told that preventive care is fake news and anti-science this entire pandemic. People who suggest preventive care, in fact, are silenced on social media and have been throughout. This has left those who get very sick with no recourse but to go the hospital and have tubes jammed down their throat when the cytokine storm happens, which it will for a certain percentage of the population. By that time, it’s too late, sorry. You’re much more likely to die after having had a tube jammed down your airway. Meanwhile, the people in poor countries who have little access to hospitals have been forced to rely on “unscientific” preventive medicine. Magically, they’ve fared better. I mean, it can’t be attributed to science, so it must be magic.

And then there were the cherry articles, all the drama over Omicron. Omg (if you say that long form, it sounds like Omicron but is also probably blasphemous, so…) everyone is getting sick because it’s so infectious. Now society is going to shut down from sick people unless you go out and get the vaccine, except please forget that part of the labor shortage is due to vaccine mandates for essential and nonessential workers alike. Many workers walked away at the mandates. Of course, that’s not to mention that there was already a labor shortage because, after having time off due to Covid shutdowns, some workers realized they didn’t want to be treated like garbage for low pay anymore. The employees that are left are the vaccinated hardcore. And they are the ones getting sick! Irony upon irony abounds. No matter how the media spins their emotional manipulation, I end up scratching my head. Our media and government overlords, I’ve determined, will not be happy until everyone gets Trump’s shots (another irony) and is reliant on the multitude of boosters because they are sick and stupid and can no longer buy groceries because the labor shortages could not be warded away with the vaccine charms. Not that the overlords ever desired our good.

Welcome to 2022! Welcome to continued shutdowns and panics over colds and viruses we used to live with as a normal course of things! I’m at the point that I wish we didn’t have freedom of the press, so these idiot journalists couldn’t go around spouting their nonsense. Oh, wait, we don’t have freedom of the press. That’s why preventive medicine is fake news and anti-science.

Sorry, friends. I really want 2022 to be the best year yet, but so far, I find myself engaged in one long mental face palm.