The Great Hate

In 2021 and 2022, the U.S. government systematically incited a hundred-million-person hate crime. Where is the outcry?

Before COVID, I had never been treated with disgust. Maybe online, but never to my face. COVID changed that. To a certain degree, it became a part of the social fabric in the upscale neighborhood I lived in outside of Boston. From November of 2020 on (after my prior governor’s asinine outdoor mask mandate was instituted), whenever I would go on a run, odds were a neighborhood Karen would hiss at me for my bare face. Who knows what she said, but the message was clear. Still others crossed to the other side of the road to avoid my potentially pestilential exhalations—even as they chatted in close converse with their gappily-masked friends.

But by far the most visceral memory I have is sitting in a neighbor’s house in summer of 2021, enjoying what had been a wonderfully normal evening. We’d met up with some neighbors at a large event held nearby, and walked back in a large group to their home. We spent the remainder of the evening drinking and talking into the early hours of the morning, almost as if it were 2019. Speaking with the husband about COVID policy (because what else was really worth talking about?) at some point he asked me—somewhat apprehensively—“but you are vaccinated, aren’t you?” I answered honestly, “No. I’m not at risk, and it’s not sterilizing, so I see no reason to risk any potential as-yet-unknown side effects.” His wife—an extremely fit woman in her late 40’s—recoiled in disgust. With a sneer, she reiterated, “you’re not vaccinated?” To which I replied again, “No, I’m not.” Her revulsion was palpable. If she could have shot shards of protective plexiglass Elsa-style, she would have. It clearly required everything in her being not to throw me out of the house. She turned on her heel and left without saying goodnight. I left immediately thereafter. These were neighbors whose children attended the same school as our, rode the same bus, belonged to the same country club and lived 3 doors down from us.

What I knew then—that the vaccines were not sterilizing and did not stop either infection or transmission—was already known and published in the clinical trial results, and well-respected, non-controversial journals. Pfizer had acknowledged months before in October of 2020 that it had not designed the trials to look for either of these things. They and others had subsequently telegraphed this to the press, resulting in a bevy of articles in late 2020 and early 2021 discussing the value of vaccines that reduced the severity of illness, but not infection. This knowledge—which Dr. Deborah Birx has also acknowledged being aware of—was presumably the reason that President-elect Biden so confidently claimed in December of 2020 that no one would be forced to take the vaccine—after all, why would you force it if it weren’t sterilizing? If it didn’t stop infection and transmission?

And yet, my liberal, well-educated, affluent neighbors were so ignorant of these data and this information as to treat a neighbor as a pariah.

Why? Why was it that intelligent, well-educated people couldn’t be bothered to consider an alternate opinion, had a nearly allergic reaction to the issue even being raised?

It felt of course, like they were the (possibly)-unwitting participants in a propaganda operation. We now know this is exactly what they were. We now know that the Biden administration’s efforts to “encourage” vaccination, included a full-scale propaganda campaign. I would encourage you to scroll through this document and consider all of the ways in which you were propagandized. Did these "vaccine engagement packages” involve “grants”, or just coercion? It seems likely that they involved some kind of compensation, as well, given that later on in the document there is a specific section on “earned media”. The distinction between earned media and other media, is that you cannot pay for earned media—suggesting that much of the rest was indeed paid for.

Excerpt 1 from FOIA request

Source file, via Judicial Watch.

Excerpt 1 from FOIA request

Source file, via Judicial Watch.

And sure as night follows day, a few weeks after the planned rollout of these “vaccine engagement packages” to the “entertainment agencies,” they started churning out propaganda—presumably to the meter of the checks’ clearance. But of course, pure propaganda like that shown below, is unlikely to sway anyone but the most jelly-brained.

So, naturally, tasked by the government with “encouraging” vaccination, entertainers and comedians “rose to the challenge”, employing more subtle methods, instead deciding to mock and deride people who had any hesitancy for any reason.

Source: Forbes

So, within a few short weeks, we have Bill Burr, one of unknown scores (or more) of comics mocking Americans at the behest of the U.S. government, and quite possily on the dime of U.S. taxpayers.

Bill Burr/Conan O’Brien skit mocking “Anti-Vaxxers”

Let that sink in…our government coerced—likely paid—some Americans to mock others, to encourage them to take a vaccine which this same government knew did not stop transmission. They did this at a time when vaccination rates for at-risk groups—those over 65—were incredibly high, with nearly 80% of the elderly having received one dose even in the least-vaccinated states.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demographics-maps

Given a lack of any health benefit at this point, the federal government was essentially engaged in a massive marketing campaign on behalf of private companies. And they were doing it by coercing, and possibly paying highly-placed, highly-respected Americans to generate fear, disgust and disdain of other Americans—even while they knew there was no longer any plausible public health imperative (if there every could be for such an action).

The federal government engaged in a marketing campaign which demonized some Americans, likely with funds provided by those same Americans. Worse still, had Pfizer and Moderna engaged Mr. Colbert or Mr. Burr themselves to incorporate their ads into their segments, in addition to costing them far more than whatever the government may have paid, those ads would have been followed by the obligatory list of potential side effects (which are, and were, known to occur). But because all of the marketing for the vaccines was taken on by the government, no such information was every appended to any of their advertisements.

Source: fda.gov

They would likewise have had to rattle off a list of contraindications and precautions, a list which—as anyone who has ever gotten* a COVID-19 shot know—is quite long indeed.

Yet, because these ads masquerading as entertainment were part of a government propaganda effort, no such warnings were included. This was true even though this taxpayer-funded marketing/propaganda campaign also targeted children, despite being conceived in April of 2021, before vaccines were even approved for children 12-15 (May 10, 2021).

Excerpt 2 from FOIA request

Source file.

Never mind 5-12 year olds, whose vaccines weren’t approved until October 29, 2021—by which time these children and their parents had been subjected to months of un-nuanced government propaganda to take a vaccine with no long-term safety data, which the government knew did not stop transmission, and hence had not possibility even of collective benefit, for a disease that posed no risk to the children personally.

Despite high uptake in all groups, but especially at-risk groups, the Biden administration apparently remained unsatisfied with the results of the summer’s propaganda efforts.

After liberally sprinkling the bitter seeds of disgust via government-sponsored dis-infotainment, the Biden administration upped the ante. They falsely declared a “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated”, and trained upon the tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans—a majority of whom were children—the fear and loathing they had been ratcheting up for months via every extant cultural lever.

Excerpt 3 from FOIA request

Source file.

The rhetoric that was used from August on was ruthlessly Manichean. The vaxxed were good, the unvaxxed were beneath contempt, ought to be denied medical treatment, literally left to die—if not outright killed.

A Look Back at the Demonization of the Unvaccinated

People don’t like the comparison with Nazis, but there is no other movement it resembles so closely as that. This was a coordinated attempt by the government—our government, funded with our money—to engender fear and loathing of one part of the population by the majority. This was done with a goal of total disenfranchisement, even to the point of death. And it often succeeded in both goals.

All this hate was fomented and orchestrated by our government, and directed towards large parts of our citizenry. The rationale for this monumental othering was wrong—not just morally, as it must always be, but factually—and our government was fully aware that the rationale was wrong. Our government encouraged its citizens to demonize, disenfranchise, and mock—sometimes, tragically, to death—other citizens who made a personal decision not to get vaccinated with a vaccine with no long-term safety data, despite knowing there could be no net social benefit (and having promised there would be no such coercion). They knew all of this, and did it anyway.

The reason they did it is as immaterial as Hitler’s reasons for massacring the Jews. What matters is the action. This was a vile hate crime perpetrated by our government against our friends, neighbors, children, and in many cases, selves. It needs to be acknowledged as such. I don’t go so far as to say that the people whose credulity and meanness abetted them in this task need to be punished, but the do need to recognize what happened, their role in it, and feel a sense of shame if not for their participation, then at least for their credulity.

* “As anyone who has ever gotten a COVID-19 shot knows”. I put this asterisk, because I did ultimately get the jab, and I don’t want to misrepresent myself. I didn’t do it for my health, but nor did I do it because I was compelled to by my government, or to gain any social privileges. Ultimately, I got it to preserve harmony in my marriage. (My husband wanted to go on a trip to a foreign country, and I couldn’t go because of my vax status. Ultimately we still didn’t go). I’m not proud of it, nor do I feel “protected”—but I’m older, so if there are harms, the scope is limited. The kids weren’t, and every day I am glad of that. When Boston implemented its vaccine mandate, as a family, we refused to patronize any establishment in the city until it was lifted. I have never used my vaccine card to access anything—and I never will. Ultimately, the vaccine mandate was the straw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in our moving to Texas from the northeast. It wasn’t because we thought it would last, or because we couldn’t get around it. It was because it was wrong. Its passage and the wide support it enjoyed showed me that far from having any humility about the dark passage we were traversing, a majority there are still glorying in being the tip of the government’s spear—happy to inflict harm wherever they are told—notwithstanding the self-righteous lawn signs claiming that “love is love.”