Escaping the City During the COVID Scamdemic, Part 1

Guest Post by Slugdaddy

Waking up in a New Normal Nightmare

This is part 1 of a series about my experience moving from a large metro area to a small rural town with my family, amidst the political and cultural chaos of the covid scamdemic. See part 2 here. See part 3 here. See part 4 here.

Note to the reader: My use of the term scamdemic isn’t meant to imply I think the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic doesn’t exist. I think it does, and it’s being used as a scam.

The covid scamdemic was like an atom bomb dropped in the middle of my life; nothing has been the same since. Not all the changes have been bad, in fact I’m probably happier now, but the involuntary nature of the scamdemic makes even positive changes feel coerced and rushed.

In March 2020, I was living more-or-less the American dream in a trendy close-in suburb of north Atlanta. Big brick house on a large suburban lot, kids attending a great private school, pretty wife, personal and professional autonomy. The advertising company I own was growing steadily, and had just moved into a “Google style” office in one of the most beautiful office buildings in Atlanta. My drive to work was 7 miles, which was almost always a serene experience, even with traffic, from the driver’s seat of my Bentley Flying Spur W12. From a thousand foot view, everything looked great…

But it wasn’t exactly satisfying, more like exhausting. When you live in an area where the cost of housing and private school are doubling every ten years, your income has to pretty much double every ten years just to keep up. You can’t afford to get comfortable; the others dads in my old neighborhood busted their asses all the time just like me. What time I had that wasn’t taken up with earning money was often spent going to and from various kids activities; including baseball, soccer, ballet class, swim team, tennis lessons, piano lessons, golf lessons, and much, much more. Just as keeping your income climbing fast enough to not fall behind had become a competitive sport, parenting itself had taken on the dimensions of a competitive sport. It was, in short, unsustainable.

THE LOCKDOWN

The lockdown started suddenly in Georgia, and, after, things were eerily quiet for some time. Under the lockdown directives, since my business was non-essential, only myself as the owner and one employee were allowed to go there on a regular basis. You were not allowed to go in someone else’s home, even if they were related to you. Most parks were closed at first. Only one family member was allowed out for groceries and other necessities. These rules were not really enforced, at least that I ever saw, but people in my suburb obeyed them anyway. For the duration of the lockdown and beyond, the people around us locked down and we saw practically no one outside our immediate family unit for a couple months.

When I did venture into the office, I was greeted with numerous layers of absurdity. The management company jumped at the chance to adorn everything with warnings and rules. (Without much consideration as to the effects that might have on the how rapid people might return to work, or how much demand there would be for commercial office space?)

In the early days of the lockdown I realized something: Though I would have happily violated the rules to hang out with a friend, I didn’t actually know anyone well enough to ask. Obviously from the beginning of the scamdemic there has been immense social pressure to conform to the rules and mandates, often with hatred directed at anyone who didn’t “take covid seriously.” It was a sad and shocking revelation for me that I wasn’t close enough with anyone to gauge where they would likely fall on the covid-crazy spectrum.

Even worse, my wife knew plenty of people well enough to know where they stood, and WITHOUT EXCEPTION her friends and their spouses were “all in” on the narrative. (As I write this I realize that she must have experienced much more intense social pressure to conform, from her social group, than I had previously considered. She held up pretty well though.)

I spent most of the lockdown riding around in the Bentley vaping marijuana and listening to techno; taking in the deepening insanity of the world around me from the protective and empowering confines its interior.

The church we had attended for several years prior locked down and went radio silent; church services did not resume until mid-2021, and then only with masks and discrimination against the unvaccinated. I realized that the “community” I had imagined myself to be a part of wasn’t really a community at all, just a subset of atomized individuals who happened to be pursing their individual goals in geographic proximity to each other. Maybe that was an okay arrangement in times of peace and prosperity, but it turned out to suck when covid came to town.

THE “SOFT” REOPENING

By the time the lockdown in Georgia ended in May, I knew covid had an infection fatality rate of 0.12-0.2%, I knew the duplicitous Fauci had been involved in coronavirus research in Wuhan that likely led to the scamdemic, and I knew the people around me were not thinking critically about what was happening or where it was leading.

Prior to the scamdemic, we had made reservations for a summer vacation at our favorite resort in South Carolina. Throughout the lockdown it was unknown whether the resort would even be open, or whether we would be able to legally travel there. It remained a beacon of hope for me in the distance, that perhaps normal would return by our summer vacation in June 2020. The resort did end up opening one week prior, and we went, and it was good but also weird. Pool time had to be reserved and was limited capacity, and “the mask” had begun to make its appearance, though only on employees at that time. Overall, it was a blessing the resort was open and we were able to enjoy a little normalcy. The night before we left to come home Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed after falling asleep in his car at a Wendy’s in Atlanta, and then attempting to taze an officer. The BLM summer had begun.

The BLM summer was one of the few events of the scamdemic that woke a few people up to the exaggerated nature of the response, and the insincerity of those driving that response. How anyone could not see through the utter bullshit, I do not know.

As it happens, my sister-in-law and her husband and children were driving up to Atlanta to visit us the night we returned from vacation. Fortunately, they took the longer route around 285. Had they driven through the city they would have been stranded for hours on the interstate without food or water, and possibly accosted by BLM protestors.

The BLM protests continued over the summer, eventually moving north into the suburbs, and right up to our neighborhood. The suburban protestors were ironically almost entirely white people. They worked in shifts, and I once actually caught them doing a “shift change” in front of the Dicks sporting goods on the corner.

MASKHOLES

The supposedly highly rated Cobb County public school system did not return to “in person” learning in fall of 2020. The private school my children attended did open for the 2020-2021 school year, but a with mandatory mask policy. As with all absurd covid policies, there was no discussion or debate, it was take it or leave it. Public school parents frustrated with the closed local schools rushed to enroll their children in private schools, like ours. This sudden influx of revenue seemed to convince the school that existing parents with concerns were irrelevant to the decision-making process, as their children could be easily replaced with newcomers who wouldn’t argue. My little princess spent her entire kindergarten year wearing a mask that made it hard for her to breathe, and there was absolutely nothing a Slugdaddy could do about it.

You’ll notice in the photo above (first day of school) that my daughter and I are wearing gaiter-style face diapers, which do make it a little easier to breathe than a full face diaper. Within a few weeks these were banned, since they don’t provide enough “protection.” My 8 year old son kept getting mask-acne. Basically literal child abuse and all the other parents thought it was just fucking fine.

To Be Continued…