My Most Important Revelation

So far...

My son, Kimbel has been asking us about different countries to live or visit in the world right now. He would like to pick up the languages of China or Japan or Russia (as I’ve been studying Russian) or Italy if he might visit there or move there one day.

I don’t think he intends to leave us just yet. He’s 9 years old, and he still has some symptoms that place him on the autism spectrum. But world traveling and learning languages has always been a big interest of his. As a parent, I don’t want to dampen that interest, but when he brought up how wonderful Australia would be or China, I felt it only fair to explain the reality of the situation right now to him about visiting somewhere that he might be permanently imprisoned in a very nice hotel room with no pool access, no lobby access, no breakfast in a common area, no windows and locked doors. He would never actually see Australia as it stands today.

My husband and I have started explaining that the laws in certain places would forbid his entrance entirely or quarantine him immediately and indefinitely upon entrance which is essentially house arrest in a prison of solitary confinement. If he’s lucky, he’ll be in fancy hotel, solitary confinement. I don’t know if there have yet been studies on the psychological impact of solitary confinement in a nice room, but the ones on just solitary confinement, the effects of isolation show real harm. More worrisome are the quarantine camps being erected in Australia and China. These eerily mirror internment camps, WWII prison camps or recent refugee stations outside of Syria.

An aerial view of the construction site of the quarantine camp in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China, on January 19.

Credit: Ren Quanjun/VCG/Getty Images / Getty

Nonetheless, my son would never get to meet Australians or have a lovely cultural experience or enjoy the natural beauty of Australia should he aim to visit today. He’d likely meet a harsh reality of culturally based indignity, have a quick run in with the police or be placed somewhere separate from our family where someone might force inject him with a toxic, experimental and potentially deadly drug that would statistically decrease by great measures his chances of survival in this world. Or else, it might ruin his quality of life for what time he has left. So many dark unknowns. To us, that was the most realistic way to explain all this.

As a result of these conversations, he has been focused on discovering all the various Covid laws around the world by comparison to the US. For a time, I considered this educational for him to be curious and use his time to research the government responses to a virus that during its worst year, never raised all cause mortality in any nation. The virus seemed to eradicate all deaths from heart disease, cancer and the flu. For a year, smokers stopped dying of cancer. It was a modern marvel, but I digress.

What we had unintentionally taught him was that the laws in place in a given nation determined how free it was. This is something many of us have taken for granted, myself included, living in a place with very few laws or restrictions and very little compliance now, after everything has been said and done. The loudest and most reported parts of Covid interventions in America are those strictly enforced by government agents either in favor of masks and vaccines or forcing businesses to not mandate vaccines.

Our state, Utah, was one of the least legally compliant with guidelines from the beginning. During the two weeks to flatten the curve businesses were closed only by suggestion and people encouraged to stay home, stay off roads (ridiculous) and close their businesses. Many businesses went along with these protocols, but many did not. Many people shopped and ignored the recommendations.

The people of Utah have historically not taken to governments telling them how many wives they should have or anything that affects their religious practices or personal lives. Utahns were pioneers. They entice tourists who are wild and free. As more outsiders have come to Utah, Mormons have grown more liberal and tolerant of allowing others to live and let live in accordance with their own values. The state grew a protective and lucrative monopoly over the sales of alcohol during the Mormon reign when the attitudes toward alcohol were overwhelmingly negative. The state got a foothold and has never let go. We still have that hurdle impeding the free market distribution of liquor in every way imaginable. However as states go, the overall opinion of the people is a strong aversion to government controls.

When it came to Covid guidelines, the people as individuals seemed to hold out for some time against the wishes of store policies and radio announcements about social distancing, masks and public health and safety. Upon the first statewide governor’s order issued which came on the eve of Halloween 2020, most people eventually complied and attitudes shifted. We went from the least compliant state almost directly to lockstep with NYC and the rest. Within 6 months, our closest neighbor was ever so forthright of her ill opinion of our family’s choices to remain unmasked. After a time of social conditioning, her attitudes of live and let lived had obviously changed. After all, her family welcomed us to a large, unmasked, Halloween gathering on the night the order went into place. In the beginning, no one seemed very concerned. It felt like an intrusion. A few months of uniform mask wearing wore on people. Beyond our neighbor, we had a really ugly situation at a Cracker Barrel of all places, just spiteful behavior from the staff toward our family for our declared mask exemption status. We stopped shopping indefinitely at Trader Joes on account of their nonsensical response to the BLM “protests,” at Natural Grocers to their corporate response refusing to acknowledge any type of exemptions included in the governors orders and at Home Depot for having frightened octogenarians at the door hassling us about what was in “our own best interest.”

After 6 months of social conditioning, the Governor’s orders went away. It could no longer be justified to force people to wear masks in April. Still, the majority of church people had been conditioned to view those who didn’t wear masks or get shots as going against Jesus. Most people in Utah held onto the custom of wearing masks almost unanimously for another month until they were gradually told by the President that getting vaccinated meant they no longer had to wear them. People got vaccinated and slowly stopped wearing masks. They still made their children who were ineligible for the vaccine wear them. Knowing what I do about the data available on the efficacy of masks against virions, or rather the lack of efficacy, it was all very painful to witness. Looking back, the whole thing felt like obedience training. It was a giant game of Simon Says by decree.

However, attitudes have and are still shifting. As people have watched loved ones die within days to weeks of injections, adults die and children be indefinitely hospitalized and sustain serious, permanent injuries apparently from vaccines in Utah, people have become more skeptical. For some reason, perhaps Utah’s ties to our individuals through the church, this is one of the ONLY states in which vaccine injury stories actually made the national news headlines. One of Pfizer’s test volunteers who was permanently injured and debilitated during the trials is from Utah. The young mother with no previous health conditions who died instantly after vaccination was from Utah. Everett Romney, former highschool basketball star heading to college and potentially the NBA and his father who were both permanently injured from severe pericardial events are both from Utah.

Many more stories, personal ones, did not make the evening news. It seemed everywhere we looked, people after vaccines became less healthy. Many friends in my age group watched their parent’s cancers come immediately out of remission following the vaccine. Now, given the news that there’s nothing more anyone can do for them, we have to wonder. Would they have carried on in remission had what was formerly considered a highly carcinogenic mRNA product not been injected into them? No one wants to add insult to injury by connecting the dots for their folks. The parents still afraid they’ll be unable to hug their loved ones should their “immunity wane” haven’t acknowledged the connection, and are rushing head first toward the booster to the dismay of many.

In Utah, people are pretty vocal about their new found distrust in the system. From the local Smith’s/Kroger grocery store butcher boy to the elderly cashier lady wearing the festive, Christmas, mask/jewelry combo to the retirement-aged cashier and bagger duo of gentlemen still working at Walmart to make ends meet, the people volunteer that they are disappointed that they have to wear masks again. They were all promised by their employers that getting the vaccine would alleviate them of the burden of contaminating themselves daily in the personal sauna of their own excrement behind a mask. Unanimously, the message of the people here is: “They lied to us.” They are not afraid to say it. One cashier followed his remark with “Thank you, Brandon.” No doubt how he feels.

Most of these people are not antivaxxers. They got the vaccine. Nor were they so much antimaskers. They wear them to work every day. They just see the plays being made and recognize that neither masks nor vaccines seems to preclude the other or make a difference in the deaths or case numbers. To these people, it’s all a lie. So, they don’t care anymore if their customers defy the signs posted all over the stores or the loud speaker playing every 15 minutes that “all vaccinated customers must wear masks” -assuming everyone is vaccinated, of course. The customers no longer care either. We went from unmasked, to unanimously masked to vaccinated people gradually becoming unmasked again to almost everyone unmasked to “you must wear masks again to shop here” to nearly 75% or more of most the stores I have visited (including some employees) apparently at “No, we don’t give a f-.”

So, when I hear that people in Texas and Florida with laws preventing people from being forced to wear masks or get vaccines have almost the EXACT SAME RATE of people complying versus not complying with suggestions, I have to say those laws are NOT protecting you from masks and vaccines. They are protecting you from seeing how irrelevant governments are when people have had enough. I told Craig Harguess at The Bad Roman Podcast over 6 months ago that the line in the sand was going to be drawn five minutes AFTER the government stepped in and saved the day. That the government would know when the people had had enough and would swoop in and pretend to be the heroes before they got themselves tarred and feathered. I wasn’t wrong. Where I am living right now proves it. Texas and Florida, your governments didn’t save you. They saved themselves and preserved the mystique that voting for them mattered, that voting in general matters.

Utah’s Intermountain Health Care hospital chain, the largest in the state recently backed down from mandating vaccines to its employees because enough people to make a difference in the bottom line called and petitioned the CEO’s stating that they would boycott their hospitals should the chain relieve any staff over the employees’ concerns and refusal about getting an experimental vaccine. No government was required. No mandates or laws were necessary. Just the free market working as it should. We had peaceful, nonviolent resolution in Utah.

I have several former and current “voluntaryist” friends still championing these unconstitutional orders by governors that tell private businesses what to do. I have to ask. Have you forgotten what voluntaryism is or how it works? Did you just want to win so badly that you gave up? I understand your frustration and thinking this was better or this was the “only way” to preserve the incomes of millions of Americans refusing vaccination. But obviously, it wasn’t. What’s more? You should be standing with me and the states that didn’t mandate freedom for some at the cost of others. You should be championing places like Utah where freedom truly rings.

This brings me to something that NEEDS to be said about the people that say “don’t move, don’t change your life for orders of governments.” These voluntaryists insist you “stand up where you are and fight for your rights by refusing to comply.” You’re wrong, too. If the majority of the people around you want to behave idiotically and tell others what to do, you’re screwed. You may have a small influence on others like you to stand up, but a minority of freedom lovers is still a minority of freedom lovers. You can’t change them or keep them from sending agents to exterminate you or lock you in a hotel room forever. And whatever way you look at it, Ruby Ridge ends the same way. If the majority of people see you as a threat to their way of life, they won’t care what really happened to you until 20 years later and even then, many will want to believe the state acted in the best way it could.

And as for me, I was wrong, too. As my son walked in the living room this morning asking about the laws in Japan as compared to the US, I got to smile and explain this all to him in a much more hopeful way. It’s not the laws that matter. It’s what’s in the heart of the majority of the people in a given region that matters. If it’s in their hearts and minds to comply with tyranny, then the laws will reflect tyranny. If it’s in the hearts and the minds to rebel against tyranny, then the law will reflect that. But if it’s in the hearts and the minds of the people to tell government to f- off, and demonstrate we can get by on our own, that’s where you want to be. That’s why we live in Utah.