57 Comments
Apr 12, 2023Liked by David Zweig

Having worked at a university and an elementary school in which colleagues were convinced that supporting covid policies was not only virtuous but demonstrated the ultimate in putting others first... ("Wearing this mask is miserably uncomfortable and probably doesn't work, but if it helps to prevent even one other person from contracting Covid, it is all worth it."); I found that speaking up and going against the prevailing narrative was extremely difficult. One found oneself waging against a double/triple/quadruple whammy of issues all at the same time:

1) "You aren't one of those weird vaccine deniers, are you?"

2) "You really don't think that the 'experts' are wrong, do you? Don't you believe in 'science'?"

3) "Are you really that selfish, that you don't want to mask. I wear my mask for all those around me, don't you?"

4) "If unmasking endangers one kid or one teacher, it is not worth it. How can you be against kids and teachers?"

I consider myself a courageous person who forges his own path, particularly in defense of vulnerable kids. However, I found it extremely difficult to speak up in these situations due to the above. One finds oneself thinking: "Do I really want to end up socially ostracized and professionally marginalized when this will all end soon?"

Except it didn't end soon...

And now we find ourselves with primary age students who struggle with basic language skills; teenagers who don't know how to interact socially; special needs kids who are even further behind...and the list goes on.

Thanks for your courageous work, David.

Much appreciated.

Kole

Expand full comment
Apr 12, 2023Liked by David Zweig

I think one of your most poignant comments in the article is the fear of being labeled a “Republican” by your fellow Democrats for simply complaining about the rules.

Our society now deems a normal disagreement as a reason to label your “rival” as either “Republican” or “Democrat." Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get back to a place where we could talk about our disagreements and, if necessary, agree to disagree?

Expand full comment

Thanks for this follow-up, David. Your article for FP yesterday was a painful read for me.

Between myself, my sister and my two children, my family spent 36 academic years at a well-respected Montessori school in Minneapolis. Our relationship ended last year, quite abruptly, at the end of my younger child's 7th grade year-just one year shy of completing the full-program.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to the parents at this school. I WAS one of those parents. I suspect the pre-COVID moments of sheer joy and magic they experienced have kept them hanging on-believing that they will someday get back to those halcyon days. What some of them clearly already know, and others will soon learn, is that a bridge has been crossed. We can't go back. Our Montessori schools, like our churches and hospitals, institutions founded in the service of humankind, are filled with people and leaders capable of monstrous things.

And that these parents can't/won't stand up to leadership- can't/won't leave- probably has a lot to do with their own grief and denial. Believe me, I know. I cried, I bargained, I rationalized--all of it. It was devastating to face the fact that this school that I had loved so much, this school that I thought shared my values about the importance of childhood and human development was doing such awful and terrible things to my child.

And honestly, while I had to get my kid out, I still have hope for Montessori. But I worry, because the point you make, David, about the internalizing of these practices as virtue will make it impossible for them to ever recognize they did harm. And if they can't turn and face that, call it out for the evil that it was, they'll never be able to put any protections in place to prevent it from happening again. And so the trust and faith, which is essential in a high-fidelity Montessori environment, will never be restored.

Expand full comment

When this is all over and no one knows why your substack is called Silent Lunch I think you should consider changing the title to Pool Noodles.

Expand full comment

We have a crisis in this country. People refuse to engage with legitimate criticism in good faith.

Expand full comment

All I can say is that parents who would allow their children to be abused that way simply for their own social “status” are disgusting. Years down the road those kids will realize what their parents did to them and there will be consequences.

Expand full comment

Okay so now that my test to see if the comment would go through has occured I will post the comment.

First I will address one of your statements (there are others) in your article which are problematic to say the least then the specifcs of Montessori and the masking situation. I live two miles from there and have frequent exchanges with students and parents and have taught several of the students (for years) and know their families quite well. I also, having lived here for twenty years, know the entire Ithaca communtiy intimately.

You state:

"Plenty of people were genuinely vulnerable to bad outcomes from Covid"

This is patently false on many levels. Virtually nobody has a bad outcome from "Covid." "Covid" as a unique set of symptoms has never been sicentifically or medically substantiated and virtually every single instance of a bad outcome from "Covid" has been a direct result of hospital protocols and/or medical neglect. Would happily debate you on this single point at-length.

I live in Ithaca, about two miles from the Montessori school. I pass by it nearly every day.

I also teach several of those kids in an outside endeavor and have done so for years including the last three. I DO NOT allow any children to wear masks with what I do and never have. It is child abuse.

Ithaca itself is an open air insane asylum and the shadow of these last three years will hang over this place for years. If you go into the local Wegman's you will still see about 20% wearing masks.

Ithaca itself is a "sick town"- it is a beehive of collective neuroses and arrogance. The levels of anti-depressants used in this "academic community" is obscene- I know this first hand.

At Ithaca College, for but one example, I can tell you of one department with 28 faculty where only 4 of them do not wear masks- even now.

I worked at Cornell for 22 years. Even through "Covid" I taught students- 11 classes per semester for 3 semesters. I refused to wear a mask and was somehow left alone- I suspect it was because they couldn't get people to teach courses as the faculty are mainly a bunch of narcissistic lunatics and were afraid to be around students or anyone.

The townspeople were just as bad- collective neuroses hardly covers it. I was in constant battles. It was remiscent of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The lib/progs proved beyond doubt that they were willing to go on with hunts as they did just that.

Once the vaxx mandate kicked in for staff and faculty I fought the administration- a futile task- and eventually was "let go."

I've got quite a few stories from these past three years.

The situation at Montessori is reflective of Ithaca overall.

The facts are that Cornell dictates what happens in this community- period. It is a company town. From that comes many policies that are implemented throughout the town- K-12 and IC and the town board itself.

Cornell received over $300 million from NIH in each year 2020 and 2021.

Most of the inidividuals that go to Montessori have some connection to either Cornell or the medical industry via Cayuga Health. These people follow the dictates of the paychecks.

Could speak to this further but must go.

Covid has never been a threat to anybody. That is pure fiction.

Expand full comment

I took a dive into moral-psychological mechanisms at work, from my perspective on Haidt’s moral palate in the piece below. I believe what we see is stronger than ‘just virtue signaling’ and I imagine the constant exposure to fear porn triggers our ‘hive’ mechanism, which conflates abstract ideas of what is ‘good’ with more visceral intuitions of what is ‘clean and unspoiled’. I’m any event, our increased level of safety (technologically induced, but also as per the mechanism described by Lukianoff and Haidt) seems to lower our insecurity tolerance threshold (which I have called mental obesity elsewhere). Thank you for your work! https://open.substack.com/pub/historyisnow/p/angorithms-and-the-socio-media-path?r=29bmr&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Expand full comment

Lots of factors at play that make for interesting discussion. One other factor that complicates #4 is that while many parents didn't like the third year of restrictions (and did voice them to admin but to no avail), they went along because the restrictions were announced the week before school started. It's easier said than done pulling your kids out days before school starts. It's also costly. Many had paid tuition up front. Also, there's an understanding among parents that for COVID and all other concerns, it isn't worth voicing them because admin does whatever they want and only take parent input when it fits into their beliefs already. For instance, they'll respond and apologize if you point out racism. Some parents say, "the school has a product and they make the rules. You can buy it or not." Most frustrated parents decided to buy it because they had bought it already or felt their kids were happy and it wasn't worth the hardship of leaving.

Expand full comment

To expand on 4/5/6, I think it is one thing to courageously stand up when it's only your reputation on the line. It is another when a consequence of making a stand is that your family, including your children, will be seen as the trouble-maker in a school community where your child spends 30 hours a week. These teachers and the child's peers can have a large impact on a child's happiness. It's a pretty high bar to give them a reason to use that power against your child.

For example, imagine there is a teacher in the school who (however wrongly, but genuinely) believes that these policies are what stand between their immunocompromised household member and an early grave. If this is your kid's teacher, do you want to be the parent who lobbies the school to remove this policy and present with teacher with (from their perspective) a choice between losing their job and putting their loved one at risk? Do you think doing so might impact how your child is treated at school?

Yes, this isn't how schools, or the world, should work. And maybe parents should have taken a stand anyway. But I understand why some might not.

Expand full comment

The teachers may be enjoying the quiet. I am a retired elementary school teacher who now volunteers at my local elementary school. While the students were masked they were much quieter than normal even without instructions to not talk. The masks were a “quiet signal” to little children. The teachers, even me I hate to say, enjoyed it for a while and then we realized how bad it was for us and the students. We are in school to communicate and to learn to take turns talking etc. Just a thought. Maybe the teachers like the quiet children.

Expand full comment

Why should we give up this awesome control we have over our students and their parents, if we don’t have to? Boy, it feels great. They cannot even talk to each other at lunch without our permission.

I submit this refrain, perhaps unconsciously, plays constantly in the background for every teacher and administrator.

Expand full comment

Years ago I read that the difference between a SanFran mom and a LA mom is that the daughter in SanFran borrowed clothes from her mom while the LA mom borrowed clothes from her daughter. Obviously, this is an outdated joke, but the concept is not. We have parents on both sides of the coast who are borrowing their well-being from their kids' school network. They want to be the popular kids and don't wish to be shunned. We have an immaturity epidemic.

Expand full comment

One mental model that has worked well for me in explaining all the insanity, in all the different places and institutions, is this: the world is divided into three kinds of people: wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs.

I think in this article you've been talking mostly about the 'sheep' (frightened teachers/submissive parents) and how to understand them from varying perspectives. The function of the 'sheepdogs' who are doing what they can to protect their children probably needs little further explanation. But in so doing I think you've completely missed the third category: the wolves. As hard as it has been for me to come to terms with this, it's now abundantly clear to me that there are evil people in this world: selfish, greedy, exploitative, sociopathic, and even masochistic. Mostly their impulses were suppressed by the framework of society; but once those suppressive constrictions were relaxed, that evil rose to the surface.

And yes, some of those people are educators.

Expand full comment

I find it sad. For both the students and adults. All caught up in a fearful purity play.

Expand full comment

You also make the following comment which reifies the falsehood that there was a pandemic- this is important even as it appears to be insignificant.

"...one of the major failures during the pandemic..."

The evidence clearly indicates a harsh and uncomfortable reality – there was no pandemic.

There was no pandemic ever- there is no “lab leak”- there is no “unique viral pathogen”- there is no “China Virus”- there is no “bioweapon”- There is no “There” there.

Portraying the deeds of the past three years as mere mistakes in response to some "pandemic" caused by a "lab leak" or GoF serves to conceal the deadly protocols established in the hospitals and nursing homes as well as provides cover for those who designed and executed this operation.

THE NYC hospital data, for but one example, clearly point to the outright lies of the entire covid fraud.

Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens was not bursting at the seams with patients in spring 2020, per data from the agency that operates the hospital.

https://woodhouse.substack.com/p/twitter-thread-occupancy-data-for

Data from the “epicenter of the epicenter”, Elmhurst Hosital in NYC, show a massive decrease in visit volume in both the ED’s and daily visit data from 3/1/2020 onward.

How is this not known and/or highlighted and repeated by those perched at the head of the table of the health freedom movement.

We have not been and are not facing what RFK Jr has termed “a mismanaged pandemic,” a stance supported by most “health freedom” celebrites. What we are dealing with is fraud, tyranny and mass murder.

Terrorizing and isolating elderly people especially those living in care homes, denying them visits from relatives and reducing or eliminating in-personal visits from health and social carers became “standard of care.”

Mechanical ventilators push oxygen into patients whose lungs are failing. Using the machines involves sedating a patient and sticking a tube into the throat. It was massive overuse of a treatment (ventilation) with no solid evidential basis, now known to be extremely harmful.

Midazolam, Propofol and Morphine cocktails were given to the elderly in hospitals to create the illusion of the first wave of the hoax pandemic.

What if It was an epidemic of government and medical assault, of false attribution of death, and of intense propaganda using fraudulent tests and bogus studies?

Start talking about global operations, conditional Universal Basic Income, programmable Central Bank Digital Currencies, digital slavery, mass surveillance rolled across the world via an endless series of manufactured crises and much of the “health freedom movement” run off.

The catapulting of GoF and “Covid” variants and on and on is part of this Psyop. Those who perpetuate these fabrications are part of the problem, knowingly or not, and are doing the work for the Bio-security State by maintaining and heightening the fear mechanisms.

“It’s just a virus and some bad actors” say the public. “A bioweapon that needs to be contained next time” say the subverted Covid oppositional actors.

Plenty of narrative reinforcement to go around. The “lab leak”, “bioweapon” story has resurfaced and is gaining traction amongst the “acceptable” ‘Covid sceptics.’

The insistence on using the “lab leak” red herring covers up the actual crimes that were committed.

However, if there was no pandemic, no evidence for a virus, what do we do then?

Well, we’d have to hold our government, our health regulatory agencies and our Media to account. The whole system would be exposed as the corrupt house of cards it is. The Lab Leak Theory keeps the whole charade alive and well.

It was an epidemic of violent government and medical assault against people, of false attribution of death, and of intense propaganda using fraudulent tests and bogus studies.

Covid 19- the largest organized crime event in history- to the tune of trillions of dollars.

The syndicate ran its operation through the legalized drug cartel, the Big Tech cartels and the health management systems.

The official narrative of “Covid” is fictional- all facets of it.

Expand full comment