Forest For the Trees, Pt 2.
Forest For the Trees, Pt 2.
Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.
I grew up playing sports - and still do. I played team sports and individual sports both at a hyper-competitive level. Seriously; myself and those around me hate losing. As I grew into my teenage years, though, I ditched the team sports because I favored winning and losing on my own shoulders.
Sometimes when it’s just you out there, you’re not at your best and get your doors blown off. Sometimes, you’re able to rout your opponent, and other times, it’s a close contest. The nature of life - push/pull, momentum, the pendulum, etc. All beautiful forces. That’s why competition is so pure. It also taught me an underlying principle that I’ve used not only in competition, but in business and life as well: Never interrupt your enemy in the process of destroying himself.
There have been times when I’ve been at a high level and completely destroyed my enemy. There have been times when I’ve escaped with a highly contested win. But, when I see my opponent make a massive mistake, and continue to make that mistake, I let him do it. Easy(er) win for me, even if it’s a tight contest.
I thought maskhysteria, which you definitely should’ve read by now, was by-and-large done in May. I thought the Biden admin would (smartly) put Covid to bed and move on to their other policy goals. I thought they’d ride their normie, NPC, midwit-appealing “America is BACK” bullshit into the Summer and Fall as they campaign for their other policies and the 2022 Midterms. See, this would be the smart, politically savvy thing to do. By doing this, you’d get wins in these key areas: Ending Covid Restrictions - which boosts your Political Capitol and the country’s overall morale, Public support in negotiating for infrastructure, or voting rights, or whatever the sAvE DeMOcRacY Issue of the Day is, a re-ignited economy, all compounding into a 2022 Midterm win. That’s not what happened.
Today, the CDC re-issued that vaccinated people wear masks in areas with a “substantial or high transmission rate” because of the Delta variant (that’s their reasoning, but I’ll mention more later). In short, everybody’s pissed. Vaccinated people shouldn’t have to wear masks - it poses no benefit to them as they remain well-protected from serious infections (hospitalizations/deaths), and un-vaccinated, filthy, lesser-than people who Want Everybody to Die (TM) like myself quite frankly stopped giving a fuck a long time ago. I’m more than capable of risk vs reward analysis. I’m not at a high risk for a serious illness - if I was, I would’ve been the first person in line when it opened to my age group. That’s why I remain unvaccinated: not because I voted for Trump (I didn’t vote in 2020), not because I live in a red state (I don’t live in a red state), not because I’m a Republican (I’m a registered Independent - politically homeless as I’ve said before), and not because I’m bombarded with misinformation (I do not, under any circumstances watch corporate media, don’t spend time on Facebook, and the data analysts I follow on Twitter are far more on-the-ball than the government. I actually wrote a substack on why vaccines are working). If those reasons are not “good enough” for you, please do me a favor: respectfully, go fuck yourself and stay out of my life.
So there you have it. That’s my reasoning as an individual. But I also recognize I’m not the only person in the country. Other people who may have been on the fence, leaning-yes, well, this just axed their incentive. A not-so-unsubstantial amount of those people would benefit from taking the vaccine. This matters because if you want people to get vaccinated, you have to be transparent and consistent. That’s how people function; a (usually) face-to-face, honest, consistent, down-to-Earth tone will always win. It’s basic sales strategy; shit, I don’t even have to go that far, it’s basic communication strategy! It’s the same reason why I have a growing audience despite being completely anon: I have a conversational tone, like we’re chilling at a small-town dive bar, I don’t talk like I’m better-than-you, and I respect my audience. People may disagree and whatnot, but overall, you walk away feeling respected at the very least. That’s important. However, when I watch/hear/read public health officials (or other Team But the Variants operatives) talk about vaccines, or masks, or The Variant of the Day, they sound like they’re talking down to you - because they are. They know everything, you, peasant, know nothing. You need to obey us, so you can be saved at the altar of Covid. We know how you should make decisions about your health, finances, education, business, way-of-life, etc., and not only want to encourage you to follow, but want to force you to follow us. It’s not wonder that people like this can’t sell a fucking product, shit, if they started talking to me at a bar I would leave less than a minute after.
I don’t expect Republican governors to re-instate masks - regardless of transmission rates. However, I’m not sure about Democratic governors. I’ve seen multiple, CT, PA - and even Cuomo/De Blasio in NY/NYC not really give in on masks. Ned Lamont (CT) knows people are sick of mandates and wants people to get vaccinated - same for Cuomo/De Blasio. I remember back when the J&J vaccine was paused and I know Lamont went on record saying he didn’t agree with it because it would hurt vaccine confidence. He’s right. That’s for now, though, and anything can change. I say this because, not only do they have a history of moving the goalposts to Mars and Back (to the MOOONNN BROOOOO), so I won’t be surprised if that happens again. I know ya’ll will be watching out for it - I will, too.
The good news is that the Delta wave will peak within the next 10-17 days and I look forward to the fast downfall of cases which both happened in India and the United Kingdom, regardless of useless NPI measures (“Freedom Day” in the UK actually happened right at their peak, LMAO).
India Delta Wave.
UK Delta Wave.
The Biden Admin and the CDC can continue to blame Delta all they want. That’s not the primary reason for the mask nonsense. This is:
As you can see, Covid is really the only definitive “win” he has, domestically. Support among Independents is weak across other key issues. Think about the last few months for the Biden Admin: Infrastructure Fell Apart, Runaway Inflation, Unsecure Border, Slow Unemployment Recovery, and Voting Rights and Climate Change have become a reoccurring talking point (meaning it’ll never get fixed).
So, like in competition, when you need a win, you double down on what works. Covid got him into office. Why not double down on Covid? You have the support for it right now. You need to show that “we’re not out of the woods yet” and that your Administration still cares about its citizens and is serious about following the science to end the pandemic (I didn’t write that sentence with a straight face).
But that’s the thing - it’s not going to work forever. Stated earlier, other Democrats have already conceded that point (you should never concede in a debate). For the most part, people have moved on and are getting back to life. If you keep yelling about restrictions, nobody’s going to care anymore - especially after people have been vaccinated. Governors will be up for re-election and a forever restricted hellhole derails localities, leading to a record amount of people people leaving your State for the first time in history (remember, the Recall Election is Sept. 14th). This is the bottom line, and people ahead of the curve will understand that.
The CDC and the establishment have blown their load on Covid. There’s really not much more they can do as people move on, mainly without them. This will show up in focus groups and in the 2022 midterm. I know some skeptics are pissed, rightfully so, but I sit back and laugh at all of this - it’s honestly pointless to get all worked up about people who are ruining their reputations and are only making more people into skeptics. Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.
I really hope you're right that they are destroying themselves. The problem is that no matter how many times they move the goalposts, people seem to take it. It baffles me to see that Biden's BEST issue by far is Covid-19, even after a year and a half of this. Somehow people are absolutely overjoyed at his response, which was basically just what Trump was doing but with his "federal property mask mandate" and a lot of obsessive shows of masking (e.g. on that call with all the other world leaders), plus lecturing about vaccines.
Your point is that he might be bungling that good issue right now; my worry is that he's just bringing his winning issue into the conversation again and giving people what they want. If 63% of people are STILL happy with how he's handled things after a year and a half, what could possibly happen to change their minds this late into the game? All I can think is that the economy tanking might make people reconsider; I think it pretty much has to start to affect people personally for them to break out of their pattern of following whatever the mainstream media narrative is. Even then, they might just blame Trump (this is also coming from a politically homeless person who didn't vote for Trump either time, although I am registered Republican).
It's just frustrating beyond belief. This moment seems so terrible because it's the inverse of the CDC recommendation on 5/13 that really got the ball rolling on ending mask mandates in the US. After a few months I was starting to believe we were actually escaping, although with a lot of scary stuff going on in the rest of the world, e.g. vaccine passports and the return of lockdown to Aus/NZ.