The seeds of Division
The seeds of division are sown with a heavy rake.
It seems to be obvious to most Americans that we are experiencing an era of immense turmoil and division. Many news outlets and publications post articles that outline this quantifiable division using statistics and popular public opinions. The commentators and talking heads say that civil war is coming and this time it’s Right vs Left instead North vs South. At a personal level, most people are afraid to openly speak about their politics as they are afraid to offend someone or god forbid someone overhears and they spread rumors that you’re a bigot. In the last couple of years I have increasingly seen friends and family members slowly distance themselves from myself or other acquaintances. Some find it easier to cut ties rather than agree to disagree. As this happens the political lines become further and further apart. You ever notice certain people who act a particular way and you can immediately tell their political leanings. It’s almost as if your politics are becoming your identity. For awhile this could have been considered harmless considering that federal level politics barely, if at all, affected you on a regular basis. Thus, YOUR politics do not affect me personally and vice versa.
The big problem we face now is that the pandemic destroyed this arbitrary political divide. We are now fully affected in our day to day lives based on our politics or the agenda of the ruling bureaucrats. Now a days, YOUR politics can totally screw me over or even physically hurt me. Today, the distinctions in red and blue states are as polarized as North Korea and South Korea. Your life in a red state is completely different than a blue one. Regardless if you prefer the way your state is run, chances are, your neighbor hates it. This is why the division becomes so raw and real today when it was so trivial pre-pandemic. “Frank across the street keeps voting for people who shut down my business and force me to wear a mask everywhere I go”. “Sally next door is an antivaxxer who is going to infect me and children with covid”. Our inconsequential differences have now become threats on each others livelihoods. This type of sentiment is what explains statistics like these:
80% of Democrats think the Republican party has been overrun by racists and 82% of Republicans think the Democratic party has been overrun by socialists.
Nearly half of Republicans and a third of Democrats would be unhappy if their child married someone from the other political party.
15% of Republicans and 20% of democrats are thought the country would be better off if a majority of the opposing party just died.
This was from a Pew Research survey conducted in 2019! Imagine what these number would look like today.
I am certain that these feelings of abhorrence could only be fabricated by a two party system and a media that is designed to divide people in this way. The media eco chambers shovel affirmation bias down our throats and consistently scorn our opponents to the point where seeing eye to eye is impossible. We believe that WE are on the right side of history and the other side is just acting with pure malice and hatred for me and my community. All the pandemic did was give us a way to really hurt each other. It allowed us to have individual power over each other through virtue signaling and public ridicule. The people around you now affect they way you live. Complete strangers can hinder your freedom of movement and thought. Your politics can get you fired from your job. Certain family members don’t come to Thanksgiving because they are scared of the ones who go. I believe that this all would have happened the same way, regardless of the severity of COVID-19. It could have been a slight cold or the actual bubonic plague and we would be in the exact same position that we are in now. I can prove it with a simple thought experiment.
Imagine a parallel universe where COVID is nothing more than a seasonal flu, and alongside this universe imagine another where COVID is a fast-spreading Ebola virus. Everything else is exact same, same media, same initial reaction, same 2 weeks to flatten the curve… pretty much everything is similar up until April 2020 when we learn more about what we are up against, and the country begins to split into teams. In the Flu universe, everyone initially freaked out but then something happened. A huge chunk of the population begins to believe that our government overreacted, and we need to get back to normal. The rest of the population says these people are NUTS and that we have to take every single precaution to ensure that we save as many lives as possible. As more and more data comes out and death tolls strike across their screens, the two groups only affirm their current beliefs and shut out any opposing views with cognitive dissonance. Even though there are very few deaths occurring mainly to sick and old people the narrative stays the same. As the months go by the separation becomes almost strictly down political lines as one side favors the lockdown/mask-up agenda, and the other side opposes it. Now lets say the same thing happens in the ebola universe, everyone goes crazy, death numbers are flying across the screen, people are saying the numbers are fake and other people are saying it’s the plague, we separate down political lines and we are right back in the same place. The severity did not matter. The death count did not matter. It could have been a thousand people or a million people or a billion people dead and I guarantee that most if not everyone would played the same role without hinderance. The person who wears three masks and a face shield did the same thing across universes and the guy who intentionally sneezes on people did as well. Most of the time any new information that runs contrary to “our” opinions is simply disregarded and seen as a threat. In both universes people were faced with conflicting views and they were forced to pick a side. You can’t be super afraid of the virus and not take the lockdown measures seriously. And you can’t disregard the severity of the virus while abiding by every mandate. You are either with us or against us. You have to think this is incredibly dangerous virus or that it’s just a big government takeover. You can’t believe in both but you have to believe in one. Half of the states opened up completely after a month and the others stayed closed for 2 years. The difference in experience is so dramatic that hoping state lines feels like you are jumping between our imaginary universes. That’s why I say the severity of COVID did not matter in the slightest. The dividing lines were already there and the virus just exposed it.
The one thing that stayed consistent regardless of the severity and that’s an exponential rise in government power at every level. Now a days, your state governor and city commissioners get to decide whether your business can open or mandate you to wear masks or even force you take an injection. The same thought experiment works for the vaccine. The inoculation could have contained straight poison or a magical cure, it did not matter. Because once something is subjective and you have to pick a side nothing else matters. If the vaccine was the only thing that could save you from the deadly plague, there would still be people who deny it. If the vaccine was killing people in mass there would still be people ready to take their boosters. Once you pick a side you can’t leave. Many people would rather die than take the vaccine because once you believe it’s poison you can never cave in and take the jab. You would be abandoning your beliefs, betraying your friends, and in your own eyes poisoning yourself. On the flip side there are people who would rather die from an experimental vaccine than succumb themselves to the coronavirus. And once you take the vaccine you can’t just flip and say that it’s ineffective or dangerous because then you would have to admit that you poisoned yourself. Once your side picks an agenda you have to run with it regardless if the opposing information is telling you the exact opposite. The only winners here are the bureaucrats. Everyone is blindly following the narrative of both psyops and fighting each other rather than those who deceive and steal from them. A divided population is much easier to control. Someday there will be a great compromise where both sides finally come together and agree on one agenda and one governmental system that trumps everything else. This is the day we willingly trade away all our freedoms for false security, and the authoritarian dystopia begins. All according to plan.