In the Garden
Fact Checking Strawmen
These fact check sites always attack strawman arguments. I am asking, “Why?” and these answers don’t add up. If PCR is the “gold standard,” why is it being dropped?
People have suffered isolation, depression, unemployment, delayed care, abuse, and self-harm due to Lockdown restrictions. The PCR test was not designed as a diagnostic and yet those numbers were used to shut down people’s lives.
With PCR tests removed from the count and vaccinated people urged not to get tested, the numbers will go down and the Establishment will get to claim victory simply by cooking the books.
“Jim McKinney, an FDA spokesman, told us in an email that to date, “the FDA has authorized more than 380 tests and sample collection kits to diagnose COVID-19, many of which are PCR tests. PCR tests are generally considered to be the ‘gold standard’ for COVID-19 diagnosis.”
CDC Drops PCR Tests
Another conspiracy theory hits reality.
Many have been trying to sound the alarm on the inaccuracy of the RT-PCR test as a diagnostic tool.
Why is CDC pulling it now? Last year we were told that mass testing was the primary method of containing COVID-19. Now there is an implicit admission that this test is inaccurate. Testing was, and continues to be, a major argument for Lockdowns.
The PCR tests may have outlived their usefulness in boosting numbers. The Establishment is embarrassed at the surprising numbers of vaccinated people who are testing positive.
The narrative is shifting. They have discovered that the population that will not buy their lies is larger than they thought.
Celebrate
A lot of wins today in parenting, soccer, relationships, and Ticket to Ride.
Most days aren’t full of wins like these and I’m humbly grateful for all the gifts God has provided me.
I spotted a young Muslim man on my soccer team praying before stepping onto the pitch pre-kickoff and after the halftime break. It reminded me to do my own quiet gratitudes before we started the second half. I quickly realized the list is infinite, even isolated to the context of soccer.
I played the rest of that game and another and spent time with family outside and inside. I smiled through it all. The blessings piled on top of the gratitudes.
I celebrate my wins and I recognize that I would have none of this without God.
Are you okay with this?
Government is using their only tool, force, to manipulate speech in public spaces.
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Politicians are liars by trade and now they are pulling the big con: State ownership of “truth.”
Another Virtual Event
No, thanks.
There’s too much life happening out here for me to sit with a screen for long.
I don’t have to watch the news to feel the effects of the fear machine on people. Fewer people will comply this time. Fewer people will believe the lies. More will go about their business. More will see through the narrative manipulation.
The bad guys have overplayed their hand. More of us are meeting without a care for the official guidance. We will continue without their permission and we will grow in numbers.
Be a Pain
This is why we fight at the mere suggestion that we should be put on a list and treated differently for our personal medical decisions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/12/france-mandates-covid-health-pass-for-restaurants-and-cafes
From Sobriety to Self Love
I got sober to get laid.
She had divorced an alcoholic and her stories of a neglectful husband and father of her children touched a fearful place in my heart.
I didn’t look into that place. I looked at an opportunity to aleviate the terrible loneliness of widowhood. I stopped drinking out of fear of harming myself, my children, and this rare chance at love.
Before our relationship became sexual, it was marital. We were mistaken as a family constantly and reveled in our roles. We thought we were in control, but I was driven by loneliness and lust. She craved the father figure and partner I was so good at portraying.
Sobriety did lead to love making. The dangerous kind that digs deeper and demands vulnerability and truth. The facades were exposed and our assumptions about our future together crumbled.
I started to face my patterns around alcohol. It was a confounding time. I needed to work on myself, yet I was pouring energy into a relationship that would dissolve, quite literally, overnight.
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Now I had to face two big fears. Was I forever an alcoholic? Would that trap me alone in confusion?
I picked up a book I had been carrying with me for twenty years, Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. Sitting on my kitchen floor in the early hours before my boys woke up, reading her affirmations and discovering my perilous lack of self love turned my life around. Addiction, loneliness, parenting, and all my fears were finally put up against an immutable power: Love.
Hay doesn’t use Christian language, but her words helped me accept the eternal river of love flowing from God. I got a glimpse of that source in my wife’s last moments on Earth. Mary showed me what was possible and it took me more than a year of hurt before I allowed it into my heart.
I bridged the cavity between believing and worthiness. Until you feel worthy of God’s love, you cannot fully receive it.
It turned out that my first chance at love after loss was not rare. I stopped looking at love as a scarce resource and began discovering it in all its forms and in all sorts of places.
Maskhole Encounter
Laws divide us. They create violent enforcers and innocent criminals. When those laws are imposed by the smallest political class, the effects are exacerbated.
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I was maskless in a Delaware library with my sons this morning. We searched the stacks for Minecraft, Pokémon, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and One Piece books.
My younger son has read 18 volumes of the One Piece manga series. Our look at the online catalog revealed that the 19th volume was available at a library on our way home, but I could not place it on hold. We had the time for a detour and headed in that direction.
This library had a very different feel. There was a uniformed guard insisting that we all wear masks. We walked out and I gave my sons a choice, wait in the running car with the A/C on while I ran in for the book or put masks on for a few minutes to join me. After fumbling in the car for our long unused and cross-contaminated masks, we returned to the entrance. A man was exiting the library and started challenging me in an elevated voice. The jist was that I was part of the problem by giving into the mask wearing. I tried to tell him, “Long day, man, tired of the fight. There are things we can only get in there and I’m giving in for a few minutes.”
He chose not to hear me. He accused me of child abuse for forcing my children to mask. I explained in clear words the choice they had been given and directed him to ask them about their decisions.
He chose not to hear me. I tried once more to explain that I may not be perfect, but I wasn’t the enemy.
My blood was up, but I saw this was fruitless. I turned my back as he crowed about my freedom to jump off a bridge, or some such nonsense.
I entered the library and noticed the guard was distracted from his post. I also checked into my memory and realized this maskless hero had only walked in a minute earlier to drop books in the return slot. His bravery extended to shouting at a single dad and his sons.
Laws must be enforced arbitrarily. One library has no mask enforcement while another in the same state has a uniformed guard dedicated to enforcement. That guard has no backup, so even that enforcement is subject to circumstantial whims. This arbitrary enforcement creates confusion. The confusion manifests as wholly absurd behaviors including yelling at strangers and improperly (and inconsistently) wearing masks.
It is all a dad can do to create a sane and stable environment for his children. It drains me many days. Today was worse than most.
Be kind. Don’t make assumptions. You don’t know how bad someone’s day has been or why they are doing what they are doing. Don’t be a maskhole.
Winterthur in July
