As the Covid crisis has unfolded in Jefferson County over the last two years, a slick, relentless, well-orchestrated fear narrative has created the greatest divide many of us have ever seen in our diverse, once-tolerant community. And with the arrival of experimental injections, vaxxed versus unvaxxed messaging has pushed that divide to a near-breaking point.

Friendships have broken, families split asunder; a two-tiered society is in the making.

Several of the pieces we’ve published since resurrecting the Port Townsend Free Press have focused on the media-driven apartheid tearing apart our social fabric. One of the most striking results of publishing these articles is the feedback they’ve sparked in the Comment sections below them. Comments like:

• Over these months those who called themselves friends have cut off communications.
• I am worried about the future. This whole thing is like a horrible nightmare… the brainwashed people around here that are in lockstep with every little thing they are told when it comes to this virus and the outrageous measures that have just ravaged society for most likely generations.
• I’m a paid member of the American Legion… I’ve never been vaccinated… and can only go in for the two meetings a month. I can’t socialize in the club or drink there.
• I have lived in PT for 42 years. My old liberal and peace-loving friends are shocking me with their authoritarian and hateful rhetoric.

The Free Press is now the only media on the peninsula for open community dialog. Many thoughtful, articulate voices are joining the conversation to fill out our stories through their comments, helping to build an uncensored local forum for civil conversations.

How is the fear narrative impacting our relationships and quality of life? We find that many are questioning their political affiliations, mourning friendships abruptly severed, stunned to see how media brainwashing has created factions within their own families.

Personal stories tell the bigger tale. Below are a few of the extended comments readers have contributed that give a taste of how incessant fear messaging is devastating our community. We are struck by the heart, eloquence, and wisdom of contributors to the forum here.

We welcome your perspective on how this growing apartheid has affected you personally. If you haven’t already, please join the conversation!

 

——————– IN YOUR OWN WORDS ——————–

 

Thank you Brett, for your calm commentary on the escalating divisiveness in Port Townsend – City of Dreams…as long as your dream is the same as ours it seems. I was one of those giving you the thumbs up as I drove by. If I hadn’t been on my way out of town, I would have joined you.

I’m a relative newbie to Port Townsend – only 18 years under my belt, so will probably kick the bucket before I gain anything resembling ‘local’ status. I thought of my move here as a lateral one – PT in the early 2000s felt much like my native Marin did 30 years previous to my exit. Now, only 18 years later, I hardly recognize this place – it has become everything I left behind. Nearly gone is the visible coterie of colorful, quirky characters who kept the town alive with art, music and any excuse for a parade or celebration in the street. Certainly gone is that ambiance of easy acceptance, or at least tolerance, of everyone’s differences and opinions.

The level of fear engendered by a media-enhanced pandemic would never have happened here 18 years ago, or so I would like to believe. The community would have come together to find solutions – not bowed to the continued onslaught of fear-mongering, turning neighbor against neighbor because of differing ideas about a virus and vaccine of all things!

What has happened here?? How did we become so vicious that we’re calling each other names simply because some of us believe that what goes into our bodies is our business, not any government or medical officers’? Despite the growing rhetoric around vaxxing or not vaxxing, vaccine effectiveness vs. vaccine injury, don’t we owe it to ourselves and our community to listen to one another’s concerns without judgment? How can we possibly hope to survive as a community if we can’t even talk to each other without escalating to name calling and villifying ‘the other’ simply because our views are different? Where does it end?

Kristin E Mineah

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Thanks for publishing Brett’s letter. How refreshing to hear a fellow citizen speak honestly about his experiences! I wasn’t at the protest, but in my view, the street corner is no longer a safe place to hold a conversation—especially when most passersby are moving at 25 miles per hour. Unlike fast-food and commercials, meaningful dialogue happens when we give time and place, and respectful listening. Sadly, when we need it most, we’ve been denied our customary venues for public conversations—pubs, coffee shops, festivals and concerts. Social distancing is a recipe for inducing depression and fear. Once I realized this, I decided not to allow myself to be manipulated. Then, I did what I always do: I sought out the wisdom of trustworthy voices—people who aren’t getting rich off of this crisis.

I turned off corporate media long ago, disillusioned by the lobbyist-influenced, gridlocked government, and the fear-mongering narratives that justify endless war and an inhumane economics. But at least—so I thought—we had independent journalism, Public Radio, getting us the truth. This morning in my car, risking a brief few minutes to listen to NPR, I was appalled (but not surprised) to hear that Facebook—a veritable fount of disinformation and authoritarian squelcher of dissenting voices—is now a financial sponsor of National Public Radio! Yikes indeed!

These are strange times, indeed, when many our fellow citizens, effectively deranged by fear-inducing narratives, seem to have forgotten about our 1st Amendment rights—the right to express our feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.

I approach controversy humbly, seeking to broaden my understanding through reading, listening, and attempting to see other viewpoints. To ridicule or censor others if their views diverge from our own denies our fellow citizens the same fundamental freedoms we hold dear.

I strive to do my part to live in a community where slow conversations happen again. I want to understand, with compassion, what’s really going on for my fellow citizens. Perhaps listening, and being listened to, from the heart will allow us all some self-reflection, and needed insight.

Gary Eduardo Perless

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Enormous gratitude for speaking truth to power during this time of mass hysteria. Please know that many are reading, watching, and standing in solidarity with you. Some are afraid for their livelihoods and remain in the shadows, but this sanctimonious community would be shocked to know how many of us work, congregate and play alongside them as fellow liberals and progressives without paying dues to the Covid cult.

We are critical thinkers who read medical studies and seek out professional, credible sources who reject, through dogged, fact-checked and peer-reviewed documentation that is being censored by social and mainstream media, the dangerous misinformation promulgated by bureaucrats—from Fauci and Walensky to Inslee, all the way down to Locke and Berry. We recognize that this campaign is not about public health—not for a disease that has a 99%+ survival rate, holds a 1-5% chance of hospitalization, and laughably boasts an leaky injection that has not been proven either safe or effective. This is an obedience test and Port Townsend, you’ve passed with flying colors. Keep submitting to your every-six-months jabs, of which you have zero idea what the medium and long-term effects are and ignore the short-term effects, including permanent heart damage, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and death. Keep relinquishing your bodily autonomy and your Constitutional rights because you have become slaves to the fearful rhetoric.

Those of us who refuse forced vaccination will keep fighting and yes, it is your rights we are fighting for. You claim the shot, masks, and lockdowns are about what’s best for the community at large (psst, no, they are not, have not and will never be about or benefit public health—the evidence is right there, available to you if you can get past your fear and disbelief that everything you’ve absorbed and believed and practiced these past 20 months is wrong wrong wrong). Meanwhile you are succumbing to mandates that have done more harm to our children, our brothers and sisters of color, our poor, those without shelter, our small business owners, our economy, and our future than ten back-to-back Trump administrations. I was shattered when Trump won in 2016. I never imagined that far worse awaited, and it would be at the hands of those I had once considered my political tribe.

Local and far-flung liberals alike have bought into the mainstream media narrative that those speaking out against vaccine mandates and/or are questioning the safety and efficacy of the vaccines are Trump-loving, MAGA-hat wearing red state conservatives. Or hippy-dippy anti-vaxxers. Perhaps because they cannot handle the cognitive dissonance that there are multitudes like me, members of my family, and friends who are (were, now) lifelong Democrats, liberals in the true sense of the word. All caught up on our vaccinations, until this—this lie bigger than anything a gaggle of Deep State fantasists could conjure.

And we vote. Many of us have now become one issue voters: the preservation of our constitutional freedoms. And we will vote in any candidate, from county commissioner to state rep to governor to president, who vows to dismantle vaccine mandates at every level and restore our freedom of choice. We no longer care what letter follows a candidate’s name. We don’t care what their positions are on voting rights, taxation, abortion, gun control, climate change, social justice. There is one issue and one issue only: release from tyranny. We have never been more afraid for our and our country’s future than we are now—watching this country and the world cave from fear, lies, deception, corruption. Know, too, that many of us who have taken the jab to preserve our jobs are even angrier: vaccine mandates may work in the short term to boost the stats and make the vaccine cultists congratulate themselves with smug pats on the back. The blue afterglow will turn a nightmarish red in the midterms. Enjoy your hollow victories now. If the jab hasn’t turned your brains to jelly in a couple of years, your collective political heads will explode when you realize what you have unleashed. You’ve just destroyed your own party. A party we were once proud to call our own. Now we are politically homeless, but we will align ourselves with those who understand this is the greatest threat we have ever faced.

AJ

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I live in Southeast Florida (Palm Beach County which had stricter protocols than other parts of the state) for about 8 months of the year and PT in the summer. Masks are currently only required, as far as I can tell, in doctor’s offices and hospitals.

When the pandemic began and before we knew anything about what was going on and how to treat Covid, my husband and I were cautious for about 3 weeks. After research, we both went essentially back to normal life although I washed my hands more often after being out in public. When masking became required here in public spaces about spring of 2020, I went from not touching my face to constantly adjusting my mask, such that it was (a thin scarf that did not impede my ability to breathe).

I have made essentially no adjustments in my life except when in PT last summer. Your rules made me crazy and then you shut down the restaurants to unvaccinated me. Yes, I’ve researched whether or not I should be vaccinated, too. We both got one Moderna shot at Safeway and instantly regretted it. I was fine, but my husband was sick for a few days and then had lingering problems for a few weeks.

My son’s wife (they live here in Florida) felt so much pressure from her boss that she got vaccinated with the one shot J&J several months ago. She developed some health issues that her doctor told her were vaccine-related as they have seen a good deal of her particular reaction. My son and their two children, 9 and 11, are recently recovered from Covid. My son went right and got Gov. DeSantis’ Regereron which he has made available throughout the state. He was fairly sick for all of 12 hours and then described his subsequent symptoms as like a cold. My grandchildren had no symptoms whatsoever unless you count one who had a fever of 100 at one point but we only know this because his mom took his temperature. They all tested negative about a week to a week and a half after testing positive, the kids being quicker than my son to test negative.

I have many unvaccinated friends who do as I do and take the vitamin, mineral and Quercetin protocol for prevention. None wear masks except when required and never have, with one literally never wearing one unless specifically asked to. Some have gotten Covid and some haven’t. All have recovered with no issues. Some had it and didn’t know it until later when they discovered they had the antibodies!

To this point neither my husband nor I have had Covid and if we do get it we are prepared with the recommended protocol to avoid the hospital at all costs where treatment seems to be not much more than a ventilator when you get bad enough.

I have never seen a health issue so poorly handled by the government. I have lost all faith in the CDC, the NIH, and Dr. Fauci. When Rahm Emanuel said that we should never let a crisis go to waste, he was prescient regarding this “crisis.” Our feckless government and those of many states, Washington included, have taken the opportunity to exert as much control over people as they can get away with. We the people need to push back and resist. I for one, even if I were fully vaccinated, will refuse to show my vaccination status to anyone. (Strangely, I’m never asked by health care providers to whom I’d be glad to share my status.)

Will I return to PT next summer? Honestly, I’m not much inclined to although we have family there, many great friends, and a fine church. I will certainly truncate my stay unless Gov. Inslee and Jefferson County loosen up significantly. I am SO grateful to be a Florida resident.

dawnesn

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We would love to hear your story!

Share your reflections on how the divisive Covid narrative
has impacted your relationships and quality of life.
Post in the Comments below. Or send your story to

editor@porttownsendfreepress.com