Tag: The Age of The Virus

Monday Morning Movie Review: Humane (2024)

The Portly Politico10 Comments

The Age of The Virus may be a distant memory now, one we’ve all done our best to forget collectively, but it revealed a great deal about the compliance of Westerners to technocratic authoritarianism in their respective nations.  Yes, there were pockets of ornery resistance—thank God I live in South Carolina!—but the full might of the weaponized media, elite toadies, and cat moms came out to scold us all for wanting to breathe free and enjoy public gatherings (the latter protected, albeit seemingly only on paper, in the First Amendment).

It’s little wonder that we try to suppress the memory of that benighted time, but like all such attempts to forget the past, it only serves as an unhealthy way to deal with deep trauma.  By pushing all of those bad memories down, we avoid thinking about the unpleasant consequences that our society-wide foolishness wrought.

Of course, part of that response is that everyone got super bored talking about The Virus because, after awhile, it did get boring.  Like all diseases, it reached its critical mass and then ebbed away, each new wave being less virulent, less lethal, and less widespread.  The Left seemed eager to memory-hole the entire thing, and the Right was just glad we didn’t have to read another boring article with a lot medical lingo that we all pretended to understand.  The Age of The Virus really did reveal how shallow and gutless we all are.

One realm in which the trauma has endured is film.  Whether intentionally or otherwise, it’s hard to suppress those memories in works of art; after all, art is, at least in part, an expression of our innermost feelings and struggles.  In vino veritas, yes, but also In arte veritas est.

The Age of The Virus crystallized a number of unpleasant Truths:  the cowardice of our populous; the brazen indifference and hypocrisy of our elites; and the paradoxical grasping to stay alive at all costs while viewing millions of other, “lesser” lives as expendable.  No film more aptly captures these wretched qualities of the twenty-first century developed world better than 2024’s Humane.

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TBT^4: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Don’t be alarmed:  it’s Thursday.  I’ve “thrown back” to this classic edition of Phone it in Friday twice before, and even though The Age of The Virus is now over, it’s worth remembering the massive social and economic costs that came from the years of lockdowns.

The line from the Left now is, “oops, sorry, we overreacted, but we can let bygones be bygones, yeah?”  Forgiveness is important, but it’s also important to realize how self-righteous busybodies with an untrusting faith in “science” berated all of us into wearing diapers over our faces and putting kids in online classes for two years.

Masks don’t work.  If you can smell a tangy fart through an N95 mask, viruses can get through.  About the only sensible advice anyone received during The Age of The Virus was to wash our hands regularly.

Yet we turned our civil and medical liberties over to a handful of unelected “public health” bureaucrats based on the flimsiest of information.  Granted, those first “two weeks to flatten the curve” were scary, because we knew so little, but in hindsight, it looks like an attempt to see how much the American people would put up with before we revolted.  The answer, sadly, was quite a lot.

One other note:  I appreciate doctors for their training, though my faith in them has always been equivocal at best.  But the real problem seems to be nurses and public health officials.  The former is a profession that seems to attract its fair share of self-important nut jobs, and who hasn’t known a nurse who insists she knows better than the doctor?

The latter are people who couldn’t hack it as either a doctor or a nurse, so they got a relatively new degree (I first heard of people majoring in public health only about fifteen years ago) that somehow grants them enormous power to curtail individual liberties in the name of “public” health.

That’s a scary Pandora’s Box:  where do we draw the line?  I imagine there are all sorts of personally harmful but socially benign health choices that deviously creative public health officials could spin into activity that must be stopped in the name of “public health.”  Even when we knew that masks did nothing—I remember folks saying, “Well, the mask doesn’t protect you, but it protects other people,” which makes no sense at all—it was always couched in terms of helping other people.  It was the same way with The Vaccine—“if you don’t get this shot, you’re endangering others!”  Malarkey.

With that, here is “TBT^2: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus“:

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Guest Post: The Year Before the Year After Next Year

The Portly Politico2 Comments

This week is unofficially “Ponty Week 2023,” as good old Ponty/Always a Kid for Today sent me three excellent pieces over the long July Fourth week (his third will pop this Friday).  It’s great to see one of our most steadfast and lively contributors back on the blog.

It’s interesting to think that The Age of The Virus, which so dominated our lives and thoughts for nearly two years, now seems like a distant memory, a bad dream best forgotten when one wakes up, returning to one’s senses.  That is certainly how the worst of the self-proclaimed public health czars and czarinas hope we will regard it:  a well-intentioned nightmare that we needn’t talk about any further.  They know they eroded civil liberties, wrecked the economy, and made anyone without a diaper on their face feel like crap, all over a highly survivable virus.  Better to sweep all that under the rug and let bygones be bygones.  Forgive and forget, right?

We can forgive individuals—we all had family members who hysterically insisted that flimsy paper masks would save us from ourselves—but we should never forget the heavy toll of our public health tyranny.  As Ponty points out, they’re going to try it again, and it’s going to be worse next time.

It is perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even hysterical on my part), but I sincerely believe The Age of The Virus was a test-run for the End Times Beast system.  Just as people willingly lined up for The Vaccine, which was promised to be the ticket to a normal life, people will line up to take the Antichrist’s Mark so they can continue shopping at Niemann Marcus.  What is one’s eternal soul when there is a sale on capris?

Even if I am wrong about that particular claim, The Age of The Virus was certainly a trial run to see how obedient we’d all be.  The answer, sadly, was, “very.”  Sure, we had some ructions after the first month or so of the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” but most Americans went along sheepishly with the dictates.  Yours portly wore his mask as little as possible, but even I took two shots of The Vaccine (not because I wanted to be “normal” again, but because I didn’t know any better at the time—and I should have!).

Ponty argues that inquiries into The Age of The Virus in Britain serve no purpose other than to strengthen the regime the next time around.  I think he is only missing one point:  these inquiries remind us, the sane, about what they did to us.  We should never let them get away with it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s “The Year Before the Year After Next Year”:

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Lazy Sunday CLVII: School, Part I

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Aside from a fairly early issue of Lazy Sunday about education, I haven’t really done one about school.  Now that I’m back to work, it seemed like a good time to revisit some timeless classics about education, school, etc.:

  • “Back to School with Richard Weaver” (and “TBT: Back to School with Richard Weaver” and “TBT^2: Back to School with Richard Weaver“) – I used to reread at least the introduction to Richard Weaver’s seminal Ideas Have Consequences, probably the most powerful book I’ve ever read (besides the Bible).  I haven’t read it in some time, but I think it’s time to pick up this old chestnut again.
  • “First Day of School 2019” – Ah, yes, the 2019-2020 school year—easily the most unusual school year any teacher has experienced, with the possible exception of 2020-2021.  I was absolutely burned out by the time The Age of The Virus hit in mid-March 2022, and it ended up being a bit of a silver lining (with all due respect to those who suffered and even died because of it).
  • “SubscribeStar Saturday: Returning to School in The Age of The Virus” – I grew so accustomed to the freedom of working from home, I was actually really dreading returning to school for the 2020-2021 school year.  It wasn’t that bad overall; 2021-2022 was much more difficult.  But it was certainly an unusual—an unprecedented!—time to be a teacher.  I still feel sorry for those who entered the profession this year.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: Back to the Grind 2020

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Well, tomorrow I head back to work.  Classes don’t start for nearly another two weeks—I guess in thirteen days—but I’ll be back in endless meetings, OSHA training, and AFLAC presentations, followed by a lot of registration stuff.

The last couple of school years were really a slog, especially last year, when we were kind of getting back to normal, but still dealing with the inconvenience of Virus-related mitigation measures.  I’m praying this year for some sanity—no masks, no vaccination passports.

Well, teaching always includes some insanity.  It keeps the job fresh, and keeps us young (while simultaneously aging us rapidly, it seems).

I’m not sure how I’m spending this last day of summery freedom—probably writing blog posts and teaching lessons!—but Summer 2022 has been a pretty good one all around.

With that, here is 12 August 2021’s “TBT: Back to the Grind 2020“:

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Shortages

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Everyone reading this post has noticed their grocery and gas bills shoot up over the past few months.  These are not the result of the war in The Ukraine, despite the mewling protestations of the Biden Administration to the contrary.  In part, they are the result of extended lockdowns during The Age of The Virus, and the subsequent disruption to the world’s “just-in-time” production model.  Shutting everything down immediately probably didn’t do much to stop the spread of The Virus, but it definitely stopped the spread of goods, and the production thereof.

But these shortages seemed largely academic until recently.  Sure, you’d hear about them here and there, and it was impossible to buy toilet paper for awhile, but other than a few panic-induced shortages, you could pretty much get what you needed, even if you had to pay double for it.

Now, for the first time since the very early days of The Age of The Virus, I’m getting seriously concerned about looming shortages—and not just a few missing luxury items from store shelves (not that toilet paper is a luxury item, but there are always substitutes for that), but the basic necessities of life.

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TBT: The Joy of Spring

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Spring has sprung here in South Carolina, with some gorgeous weather.  It’s actually a bit chilly this morning, but overall there have been some warm—even borderline hot—days, with plenty of bees a-buzzing.  One managed to get into my house, but I was able to capture him in a Tupperware container and release him back to the world, though I flung the container as I opened it and dashed in the other direction—yikes!

Just like two years ago, my flowerbeds are 80% weeds, 20% plants I want growing there, so I’ve got to get on that this weekend.  The relentless growth of dandelions makes it a Sisyphean task, but I must endeavor to do better in my humble flowerbeds this year.

It’s also the downward slope to summer vacation.  At this point, there’s probably another couple of weeks of actual learning to be had, then a leisurely drift into exam review week and exams themselves.  I’m also cooking up the 2022 iteration of the TJC Spring Jam, which I might make into a recital for my students this year.

Two years ago, during The Age of The Virus, we enjoyed an unusually long, mild spring in South Carolina.  Readers who don’t live in the South might not appreciate the significance of that:  we typically get a couple weeks—maybe three—of proper spring weather before summer dominates everything in a veil of humidity and heat, refusing to lift its terrible, sweaty fist until sometime around Thanksgiving.  At a time when every remotely communal activity had to be done outdoors, a mild spring was a Godsend.

Indeed, I think it was a literal one:  I really do think God sent us that cooler weather so we could still be together during that difficult time.

Regardless, hot or cold, I’m glad to be alive, and that The Age of The Virus—at least for now—seems to be an increasingly distant memory.

With that, here is 11 May 2020’s “The Joy of Spring“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Educational Tyranny

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Apologies to readers for the delayed post.  After a long but productive week and a drive to Athens—not to mention a late-night dose of NyQuil—I’m getting a late start on this post.

Education is a field that tends towards authoritarianism and centralization, especially when faced with a major problem outside of its usual scope.  The field’s emphasis on safety—understandable given that teachers and administrators work with children—can become, in certain circumstances, pathological.

Schools, especially public schools, sit at the uncomfortable nexus of politics, liability, and conformity.  Various political schemes to improve education often backfire, instead creating onerous additional tasks that rank-and-file faculty shoulder.  Centralization of control at the State and federal levels, rather than aid classroom teaching, often merely force conformity on the profession, while creating unrealistic “benchmarks” that don’t align with local conditions or needs.

The ever-present fear of lawsuits reduces administrators to whimpering toadies, themselves often filled with silly pedagogical theories from bogus education programs.  Educational dogma is fully onboard with social justice foolishness, and education programs are excellent at producing dedicated Cultural Marxists and “activists,” all eager to indoctrinate students into the prevailing cult of groupthink.

Within this milieu is the tendency for professional educators to possess a bit of an authoritarian streak.  There are plenty of good teachers with an authoritative approach to both their subject matter and classroom management (the buzzword for “discipline” or control of the classroom), but some teachers and administrators relish control over their tiny little domains.  Small people ruling small fiefdoms tend to possess rather inflated senses of their own rightness and righteousness.

The Age of The Virus, then, provided the perfect conditions for justifying all manner of policies and procedures that do little to help children learn, but do a great deal to empower administrators, district offices, and the like with the pretexts for depriving students, employees, and parents of any modicum of personal and academic freedom.  The very same forces that would hawk abortions with the rallying cry of “my body, my choice” also gleefully mandate experimental mRNA vaccination regimens and literal muzzles—even for vaccinated employees!

Locally, the Darlington County School District has tied vaccination to COVID leave, an invention of the federal government that allows teachers quarantined or sick due to The Virus to receive paid COVID leave in lieu of their regular sick leave.  Per the article at the News & Press (emphasis added), “‘Some people may think this is controversial,’ Education Superintendent Tim Newman said. ‘Sometimes, you just have to take a stand for what you think is right.'”

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Festivals in The Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Just when we thought life was returning to normal—or, perhaps, when we thought life was being allowed to return to normal—a wacky new variant of The Virus has reared its viral head.  We’re told it’s hyper-contagious, though the fact that it’s even milder than the original recipe is seldom mentioned.  Just as New Coke wasn’t as good as Coca-Cola Classic, so the Delta Variant is a poor imitation of The Wuhan Original.

Well, the sequel is never as good as the original.  Unfortunately, our public health overlords at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don’t see it that way.  They and their lackeys in the media are going full-scale alarmist, now recommending even vaccinated individuals to wear masks.

But, wait, didn’t The Vaccine purchase our freedom from masks?  Aren’t masks of dubious effectiveness, anyway?  Well, never mind.  The Cult of COVID holds sway among our ruling class, and they’re never wrong, and certainly never the architects of unmitigated disasters.  Let’s all chant the necessary rites—“Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve!”—“Socially Distance!”—“Wear a Mask!”—and surely St. Fauci will make the necessary sacrifices of civil liberties to appease the angry god COVID.

Among the many casualties of our adherence to this death cult is the many public events, those places where we used to gather to celebrate our shared history, heritage, and culture, and simply have some fun.  As the weather slowly hints towards crisp autumnality, it’s worth considering the fate of our beloved festivals.

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TBT: First Week of School in The Age of The Virus

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School is back, and while I’d like to think The Age of The Virus is in its twilight death throes, the powers-that-be seem intent on foisting fearmongering variants upon us, no doubt as a pretext to strip us of more of our civil liberties.

Regardless, we’re starting back normally this year—as normally as possible—with a whopping 408 (and counting) students.  Considering we had fewer than 100 students a decade ago, that’s a pretty huge change.

Hopefully we won’t have any major outbreaks this year, as we largely avoided last school year.  We managed to get through with only a few isolated cases among students and faculty, and finished up with life largely back to normal in the final two months of the year.

It’s interesting looking back to the beginning of last school year and seeing how the year progressed.  The fiasco of using Loom lasted about two weeks for yours portly; I quickly reverted to using the desktop version of Google Meet to record my lectures.

I’m also relieved that I won’t be livestreaming classes anymore.  I don’t have anything to hide; it’s just a huge hassle getting online kids logged in, much less engaged.  There’d frequently be times when I was ten minutes into class and a student would log in after being marked absent; sometimes I wouldn’t catch that the student had entered class, and the student would then complain about the absence.

More frequently, students would log in the moment I’d sent the attendance e-mail to the registrar, so I’d have to resend the e-mail.  Sometimes the registrar wouldn’t see that second e-mail, and I’d get a call in the middle of class asking if the “missing” student had logged into class.

Those were minor issues when compared to bigger problems with the online platform—students suddenly switching to distance learning on test days, for example—but still headaches.  It probably cost a good five-to-ten minutes of class time just to take attendance.

Well, here’s to the normal amount of craziness and bureaucratic overreach of the typical school year.  With that, here is 28 August 2020’s “First Week of School in The Age of The Virus“:

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