How do you know a topic is over and you won? Well, the opposition speaks your language and the head of a multi-million dollar media empire that dwarfs CNN, MSNBC, BBC and France24 together in terms of audience basically speaks the exact same words you’ve been speaking when you ushered in your own narrative.

Daily Wire is in top 10 largest podcast publishers (bigger than Disney!), in top 10 most widely read websites from the entire Internet and gobbles up 8 and sometimes 9 digits (!!) audience figures per day across platforms. In other words, Daily Wire is as mainstream as it can possibly be.

The video above, where Ben Shapiro (whose wife is a doctor – let’s not forget this 😂) speaks the language of the opposition effectively ends the conversation. So the pandemic project is over (even if you can still see pockets of Branch Covidianism on Twitter and Facebook). So, as this is slowly coming to an end, it’s time to ask, in all seriousness, what have we learned?

Reading back to the article I wrote at the beginning of this panic, almost three years ago, I have to say I’m sorry I was right on the 5th point. I was really hoping that I’d be proven wrong, and not too many little dictators would emerge. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, things rolled more or less as I predicted. But the question is: How did I, and tens if not hundreds of millions of us across the Northern Hemisphere know?

No accident

I don’t have a Harvard Law education (thank God for that!) and my wife isn’t a doctor (Слава Богу for that too!) – and this remains true for every single individual who supported the Sofa message right from the get go.

Very well-educated and well-read men (and some women) are now coping with the fact that what they perceive as “the lesser” were entirely correct and they were wrong. Some are coping with it relatively honorably (by acknowledging they were wrong) while others maintain to this day that the rest of us simply got lucky. The latter category is worthy of scorn for many years to come, not only because they commit the sin of assuming shit but also because such hubris should be socially discouraged wherever possible.

We could’ve discussed luck if we had gotten one or two disparate things right while being just as wrong (or even more wrong) than the booksmart people. But that’s just not the case.

On everything – from survival rate, to the immorality, illegality and illiberalism of so-called NPIs, to the viability of the myocarditis-inducing experimental gene therapy clotshot… on everything we got things right, or at the very least closer to the truth than they did. That’s not a coincidence nor is it luck. It’s something else. Something that is now missing from those who profess to be thought leaders: street smarts.

Street smarts breed adaptable people

In the past, until the 1950s or even later, both the elite and the plebs had street smarts. In the past, the elites would speak 4-5 languages as a matter of routine, travel more or less with the plebs, and reality compelled them to learn how the world actually works once they step foot outside the reading room.

Now, however, most of these people live completely separate lives from the rest of us. In a very physical and concrete way. And that is to their detriment too.

Erika Fatland is the only writer that I’m aware of in contemporaneity that is both in the traditional elite chambers and still behaves like an elite used to. She makes good money off of investors and institutions for doing more or less what I do: travel the world by train with the plebs, speaking with the plebs rather than at them, and then report about it. Turns out the plebs are still willing to listen/read even a snob/elitist opinion as long as it comes from a place of authenticity (i.e. you’ve actually been there and know your stuff) – which is a nicer way of saying… having street smarts.

Us, the plebs, got the pandemic project right not necessarily because we were smarter (though in some cases that was the case too), nor because we were lucky. We got it right because we had a higher dose of a different type of smart.

Having street smarts is not just physical fighting skills and ability to manage difficult situations in an urban setting. Street smarts is also the ability to blend in with many different types of people.

By necessity or by choice, us plebs with street smarts didn’t stay in an physical or virtual silo during the pandemic project. We kept on talking to people who virulently disagree with us but also with people who probably agree with us a bit too much.

Street smarts does mean being able to assess risk. So for those with street smarts, it simply came natural not to freak out too much about the Wuhan Cough. It made sense not to automatically trust the “official sources” – precisely because down here, at the street level, we’d seen this movie before. We knew – not by luck, but by previous trial and error – that the official sources will lie if they’re required to do so or if they panic and get stupid in public.

Unlike the so-called “educated” we didn’t display the memory of a paramecium. So by September 2020, nearly 100% of the street smarts people had figured out most of the pandemic project. Face it: It wasn’t even hard. When you tell plebs that the Wuhan Flu spreads dangerously at the Church but not in crowded shopping malls, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something’s rotten.

The shock and horror of the book smarts people when they learned that the plebs will go around the mandatory vaccination with impunity (see Germany, France, Greece and Bulgaria, Italy, and so on) also showed just how out of touch these people are. I could go on more but you get the point.

Ideally, one would seek a balance between street smarts and book smarts. But, when such thing is not possible, then more street smarts is preferable for most people, since most of what constitutes street smarts used to be called common sense which, yeah, ain’t that common anymore.

Get the nerds back in the closet

So if there’s anything we can learn from the pandemic project in terms of reference points, it’s this: While books are good, touching grass is far better. And not being a terminally online NPC is highly helpful.

Ultimately, the pandemic project was a long, costly and painful experiment of a society ruled by nerds manipulated by pseudo-elites who wanted money and power (not necessarily in this order).

Face it: Most doctors are either corrupt bribery-receiving psychopaths or they are nerds. Neither category is fit to run society. Yet that’s exactly what the pandemic project attempted to do: to run society as if it’s a gigantic hospital ward with the sole purpose of preventing one disease.

Such dogmatic unidirectional focus and utter disregard for collateral damage (i.e. trade-offs) can be found in many people but it is overwhelmingly concentrated in just two categories: psychopaths and nerds.

And most of the people directly tormenting us for the last three years were nerds, not psychopaths. And without them, acting as enforcers, the pandemic project wouldn’t have been possible.

Think about it. Who tended to be the most Stakhanovite about the pandemic project? Corporate middle managers (nerds), hyperspecialized previously obscure Twitter accounts (nerds), terminally online antisocial IT folks (nerds) and the writers at “serious” newspapers (most of them nerds). Everyone else not in these categories dropped the pandemic project from their mind by September 2020.

Sure, we can quibble about exceptions and all that, but, by and large, the nerds were very good enforcers of the pandemic project without whom the project would’ve failed even earlier.

Some people still think this is something new. But it’s not. In 2009, Mexico went into lockdown for a flu. But in 2009, it was still acceptable to respond to those proposing such crap with the perfectly sensible reply of: “Shut up, nerd! Touch grass!”

I cannot stress enough just how big of a civilizational mistake it was to let the nerds out of the closet. It’s bad for society and it’s bad for nerds themselves too.

Can this geenie be put back in the bottle? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s worth a shot. Start by not taking nerds seriously and by avoiding as many activities associated with nerds as possible. It’s definitely a good start. Also, discourage your children from nerdy activities. Get him/her to play football/volleyball/whatever outside.

The takeaway is to continue to do what we, the street smarts people, got correctly right from the get go: Touch grass!

That’s it.

Over the last 12 months, the issue of (trans)genderist ideology being shoved down the throats of children blew up and will likely influence the upcoming Midterms positively.

Needless to say, it isn’t a new topic. Here we’ve been discussing it for years. Because that’s why people come to the Sofa – to learn the news from the future.

Watch videos:
46 year-old dude is a 6 yo girl
Norway’s intellectuals: Transchildren “need” legal recognition
Progressive transgenderism: Sex toys for 3 year olds
Carnival cancelled because the kids dressed ”gender stereotypically”
“No Gender December” – The UN’s latest cause in Australia

So considering that now even left-wing mainstream figures sound on this issue almost exactly as the Sofa sounded over 7 years ago, suffice to say that the issue is now past the narrative curve’s third inflection point and, as such, it no longer requires the attention of cognizant political actors – such as this esteemed audience.

Put it simply: The issue will be solved regardless of whether we put in any effort from now on. The alliances are set, the plebs are awoken, the money is already there for the campaigns and momentum is also present. So, best we can do is make sure they don’t blow it (never underestimate good people’s ability to fuck things up).

So what we should be thinking now is the next step. What happens after this? The moment of “after” isn’t far away at all. Just a few days ago Florida banned puberty blockers and the whole “therapy” aimed at castrating and mutilating children. Most countries in Europe have either already did this or are considering similar policies. Most of the US will follow suit in the next 3 to 5 years. It’s a done deal. So… what’s next?

Tantalizing both sides

Once the children issue is solved (for which near-universal agreement exists), the issue will naturally gravitate towards adults. What to do with so-called “transgender” adults?

The current alliance between normal people, religious freaks, far-Left feminists and other members of the C-set may or may not hold. Those more libertarian will be tempted to abandon the issue once the children side of the story is solved. This will necessarily increase the power within the remaining alliance of the recently-acquired far-Left feminists (so-called “TERFs”). And their argument is a powerful one: Protect single sex spaces!

Now, the message itself is not prima faciae wrong or morally reprehensible. The problem is that, in practice, this means protect women’s and only women’s single sex spaces. And THAT, I contend, is morally reprehensible.

The other “side” isn’t/won’t be any better: They will claim that adults can “self identify” as whatever they want and disagreeing is discrimination which is allegedly a bad thing (it isn’t).

What I suggest is that we tantalize both sides (the English language doesn’t have a perfect equivalent for a băga bățul prin gard).

We tantalize the TERFs (alongside the well-meaning people who actually buy into the inherently misandrist message that women’s single sex spaces are for women’s safety – which is a deeply hateful message if you think about it) by imposing conditions: You want our help? Great! Right after we get codified in law the exclusive right of both men and women to single-sex spaces.

We tantalize the other side by over-enthusiastically supporting their bid(s). And by that I mean saying the quiet part loud: The transgender agenda as applied to adults will destroy women’s sports (which is not a bad thing, given that women’s “professional” sports is already entirely subsidized by men and is generally of no value to the community). This agenda will also ruin all sex-specific policies (which is objectively a good thing) when it comes to “affirmative action”, “all-women shortlists” (in politics) and other similarly destructive, illiberal, immoral and inherently misandristic policies that are plaguing our societies.

Why?

Ultimately, we have to admit we don’t really have a dog in this fight. Whichever side wins, it brings some positive and some negative things with it. So the best we can do (and, I argue, should do) is to try to influence the final position(s) of both sides in such a way that we get as much as possible out from this conflict.

If the “TERF side” wins with our amendments as well – we get an important step in the right direction when it comes to freedom of association. The very idea that in most countries of Europe you can’t run an all-male OR all-female club/business/NGO/school/etc is bonkers and illiberal in and of itself. Freedom of association also means freedom not to associate. And, as politically incorrect as that may sound, yes, this includes the freedom to refuse to associate with the opposite sex sometimes.

I’m not going to get now into the benefits of that. The benefits of single-sex schools are well known. Not to mention the benefits to the mental health of both teenage girls and especially teenage boys of having a place to go to where one is not subjected to the inherent weirdness of the opposite sex.

Today we are at a time and place where all-male spaces are either outright banned or heavily shamed into oblivion. There’s a reason the phrase “sausage fest” has an inherently negative connotation and it is also much more widely known that its equivalent – fanny fest.

What I’m arguing is that instead of fighting to get “fanny fest” down to the same negative connotation, we should instead fight to abolish both terms. There is nothing inherently wrong with events/places where most or all participants are of one sex. Quite the opposite: oftentimes it’s very healthy.

The downside of this route is that we’re not getting rid of feminist harpies this round either.

If the progressive/gender abolitionist side wins, we get, progressively, the destruction of all women-only policies, render “affirmative action” useless and, bonus, our societies end up saving up on some money too.

Just as I’m typing this, the Women’s EHF EURO 2022 is taking place in Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro. A handball tournament that very few care about, but for which the governments of these (already poor) countries paid a fuckton of money that they’ll never see back – because Women’s Handball is nowhere near as interesting as Men’s Handball. Just like in other sports, a 3-rd tier division match between semi-pro men’s handball teams is far more competitive and attractive than even the grand final of Women’s EURO.

So, if the progressive side wins, all of that goes out of the window. Slower, or faster – but out it goes. It’s the natural/logical conclusion.

The downside of this is that it actively harms women without benefiting men. But is it really a downside?

Women allowed feminist harpies to protest in their names, for decades, for nothing less than the legal abolition of male-only spaces. So why should we care that, if in this dispute the “progressive”side wins, it would effectively do the same to female-only spaces? Welp,… I will need to be convinced to give a damn. I don’t actively want to destroy women-only spaces – but I honestly dgaf if they end up being destroyed because of this conflict.

The point being this: We cannot go on for much longer with the status quo – where single-sex rights de facto only exist for women. Whichever way this conflict goes – either by abolishing single-sex rights altogether or by reverting to saner standards – will still be a better position than the current one.

Of course, ideally, both sides should win and lose at the same time. Ideally, we should restore much of the freedom of association lost on the altar of feminism and progressivism and we also should get rid of affirmative action (of all kinds), get rid of feminist harpies and all the rest of the single-sex (read: women-only) programmes that exist solely on the basis of theft of resources from men and redistributed to women for no benefit whatsoever for the community as a whole.

But, we don’t live in an ideal world. So, the best we can do is to try to influence the position(s) of both sides in such a way that minimizes harm and maximizes the steps in the right direction.

That’s it for now. I haven’t yet made up my mind on the strategy – so I am all ears on a different strategy. Now it’s your turn to convince me that I’m wrong. Through the usual channels, of course.

Cheers!

Dear Branch Covidians,

In the last day of October, the far-Left propaganda and Regime shilling outlet The Atlantic published an astonishingly tone-deaf piece titled Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty.

As per the article itself, our response simple: NO. And by that we mean HELL NO!

With that said, however, we are open to discussion about a pandemic amnesty. We have no interest in holding a grudge forever. Unlike the Branch Covidians – who never stopped with their creepy and dystopian talk of “the new normal” – we have no intention of inflicting a revanchard agenda upon them forever.

But, we’re also not interested in unconditional amnsety. Justice needs to be served. Forgiveness can only come after punishment has been doled out, contrition has been shown and apologies have been asked. Not a second earlier.

So here are the Sofa’s conditions for amnesty both at an individual and collective level:

• Get fired and don’t work anywhere for 24 months (work for free is an acceptable option) and live on savings. No welfare either. In the case of medical profession, the period must be a minimum of 48 months because of the inherent Evil of that profession
• Pay an amount equivalent to 8 months of the Branch Covidian’s current income plus 20% plus all of the bank/transfer fees to a reparations fund
• Additionally, pay out of pocket reparations to all those you personally harmed, but no more than the equivalent of 16 months of your current income. Subjected to the private arbitration of a panel of your peers – two normal people and one Branch Covidian
• Post public heartfelt apologies and, where applicable, do a TV tour as well
• If applicable, publicly denounce your political party’s Covid19 policies and leadership and work hard to remove them from politics altogether
• You are automatically signed up as a volunteer for all trials of mRNA-based medical products, in addition to mandatory 4 Moderna shots per year for 10 years
• No right to vote for 10 years
• Make amends by amplifying those who were right about Covid19 and purposefully making space for them explicitly to the detriment of those who were wrong
  
• If applicable, denounce those above you and collaborate to any investigation that can lead to jailing, firing or fining of those above you (applicable for anyone working in “public health”, education, medicine, multinational corporations, any government agency and other institutions at fault for the situation)
• Publicly work, for at least two years, to get “public health” recognized as an illegitimate profession which thus enjoys undue and illegitimate authority

Why is this necessary

Of course, at an individual level, especially with the rank and file, we are open to further negotiations (except for the reparations fund – that’s a must). But without personal punishment equivalent to the harm(s) inflicted, this whole madness will happen again.

You can’t just come out and say “Ooops, my bad!” after two years of being consistently wrong and after two years of demonizing, dehumanizing and abusing those who were correct.

And most certainly you cannot, as Prof. Emily Oster does in The Atlantic, come out and say that those of us who were entirely correct all along were simply “lucky”. No, we weren’t lucky. You can be lucky once. Maybe twice. After the third time in a row of being correct, it’s no longer coincidence or luck.

You also cannot come out and say that despite being entirely wrong about everything, it’s all excusable because it was done with good intentions. Mao Zedong also had good intentions. We’re not interested in your “good intentions”. The policies you supported amounted to illiberal, illegal, useless and immoral abuses against basic civil liberties and human rights. That cannot and will not be forgiven by a simple ”oops!” Nor will it be waved away under the excuse that the abusers had the best intentions in mind. With all due respect, fuck your best intentions! Sideways!

If these policies had been advocated and implemented by a nominally Right Wing elite, you would be asking for public prosecutions. So you will forgive us for asking roughly the same.

You also cannot expect anyone to forgive so easily after your side closed public parks, filled skate parks with sand to prevent teenagers from having fun, called children killers (this happened in Germany, Denmark, Romania and other countries), closed churches, implemented policies that drove children literally insane (who knew that solitary confinement is torture, am I right?) and, perhaps the most unforgivable, advocated for the death through starvation of those who disagree with you (because that’s exactly what “workplace mandates” meant in practice).

It shows a tremendous sense of entitlement (and no contrition whatsoever) to simply expect to be forgiven and granted amnesty after all of this.

Your policies led to inflation, job losses, a spike in unnecessary cardiopathies, loss of careers, suicides, severe deepening of pre-existent mental health problems (in addition to creating new ones), learning losses, crime increases that we’ll all have to grapple with for decades to come (we have no idea how many new serial killers are out there and we’ll only learn the hard way over the years to come) and a whole plethora of social and economic troubles that we can’t even properly assess yet for they are yet to manifest themselves.

And this is in addition to the open celebration of the deaths of those who disagreed with you, the open instigation(s) to genocide against those who disagree with you and the destruction of important events of life (baptism, weddings and funerals).

All of this was for nothing. And you were told, a quintillion times, that you are wrong. You refused to listen. You insisted you know better.

The excuse that you didn’t know better may work for March of 2020. Maybe for April 2020. Some more charitable people (certainly not us!) may even be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for the whole of 2020. But under no circumstances is your side deserving of anything other than punishment and scorn for the brutal insanity you personally helped implement in 2021 and early 2022.

There is no way we will forgive that easily without proper punishment being doled out.

Kathleen Hochul, the presumptive frontrunner for the gubernatorial race in New York outright said she would do the exact same sanitary fascism allover again. Kansas governor stated she has absolutely nothing to apologize for the atrocious, illiberal, illegal and illegitimate way she supposedly ”managed” the Wuhan Flu.

With very, very few exceptions, virtually nobody from your side even apologized. So, under these conditions, we have no intention of discussing amnesty unless it is in the terms we laid out above.

Until an amnesty is reached, as far as we are concerned, we continue to be at war with your side. All out war, to be more precise.

Anything is fair game: Your career, you as a person, your family, your children, your business, your finances, your hobby/ies – anything you hold dear. If it is legal for us to attack, we will attack without any regards on how this makes you feel. Until you yield to our demands. Because our demands are just and rightful and your position is illiberal, illegitimate, morally reprehensible and downright Evil.

There is a time and place for amnesty. That time has not come yet. It is up to you when that happens.

Kind regards,
The Sofa.