Thread by @Sarah__Reynolds

Good Morning! Full communication analysis of Emily Osterman’s call for #PandemicAmnesty is on substack now! Check your spam! Sending substack emails straight to spam is the new cancelling/shadowban. Thank you! There shall be no amnesty, only atonement 🤍 sarahreynolds.substack.com/p/everyone-is-…

“Amnesty” is a very specific word. It doesn’t mean forgiveness, it literally means a pardon, i.e. the absence of punishment … for a crime committed in the past.

It is a stark loaded word indeed when used to refer to anything Covid-related because it establishes 2 parties: victims and perpetrators. Group 1: Those who committed crimes and could be in the legal sense pardoned of the criminal behavior they engaged in; and …

Group 2: those who will consequently not get justice.

The most revealing part of the Professor’s piece in the Atlantic is this statement:
“The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a …

…repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward." No, vacuums are complicated. All those attachments.
Tyranny is quite straight-forward, in contrast.

Rarely do we hear people say, “it’s complicated,” unless they are feeling profound regret, fear of the consequences of those “complicated choices,” and plenty of denial of the emotional origin of that particular word choice. They don’t even know *why* they were compelled …

…unconsciously to use that word…but we do. The stark truth would likely be anything but complicated and possibly horrifying.
For example, what if Oster got on twitter tomorrow and tweeted out, “I don’t think I feel regret or remorse like other people. Intellectually …

… I get it: the Pandemic response caused human beings unbearable pain and society irrevocable damage but it doesn’t really bother me per se and sometimes I even feel gratified by it, especially when I witness overt force (mandates) replace emotional manipulation (shame).” …

Now I’m sure Oster is a wonderful person with a fully intact moral compass who’s 100% able to empathetically relate to others!! But … IF … on the off chance it were a true statement so she did declare it on twitter, it might seem complicated to HER but …

… but to US, it would be the simplest most logical explanation for her actions. We’d go, “Oh! She’s a sociopath! Oh my God, now it all makes perfect sense! Hahahahaha I get it now!”

Now let’s look at another passage from her piece:
“All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive …

..In face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck..similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.”

Now, my first read-through, I heard her condescending HR tone, patronizingly correcting you for directly confronting a bully coworker instead of going crying like a baby to tattle to mommy in Human Resources. But — then — I realized that she was confessing when she writes …

…“getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing.” Oh but it was. It was egregiously and gravely remiss of anyone to demand or coerce churches and schools to close and keep Walmart and Target open while the mom and pop shops went under and out of business …

It was unethical, immoral, and unjust to developmentally delay tiny babies and little children by covering your and their face with a mask. It was ludicrous and sadistic to change definitions of the words “vaccine” and “herd immunity.” …

Forcing people to disclose their medical records to bosses and coworkers was a blatant violation of privacy that the corrupt infiltrated ACLU even backed, to say nothing of the obscenity of being forced to endure a medical procedure against your will in order to keep your job!

Yes, Emily, you failed. You *morally* failed. …

Now, when someone tells me further discussion would ultimately be unproductive, I hear the desire underlying the words: desire for silence, secrecy, and sweeping something under the rug. All of a sudden, the fear underlying the overconfident tone, the arrogant presumptuous …

…prediction of the future as requiring you, untouchable, to sit down and shut the fuck up, rises to the top. It’s as though she’s poo-pooing us! Why would that be? Fear. The fear of someone afraid they did something so wrong that it might be considered illegal.

Finally, each of the five sentences is a declaration of reality from a position of authority — these types of statements are made by judges and people who write policy. Read each sentence again: each one is a statement of opinion as if it were a fact. Let’s pick one:

“Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.” A non-psycho would say, “If I had known then what I do now, I wouldn’t have wanted our kids to be locked down, masked, and learning over Zoom ..

…and I don’t want this issue to keep dividing our country. I wish I had known and made different choices.” Nope, each sentence is crafted very VERY carefully to avoid any acceptance of responsibility (culpability!) or regret. There’s not one I-statement in the entire paragraph!

Remember “we made complicated choices”? LOL! Not an iota of emotion or responsibility for anything. So condescending. I don’t think this woman feels bad for a second for behaving like an actual monster. (She feels bad she got caught.) But her speech/writing patterns seem to …

…reveal, in my analysis, that’s she’s very very worried that *you* might be angry. That we all might be very very angry. And ready to demand justice. The only thing we’re going to forget is Amnesty. And what are we going to embrace? Atonement. #PandemicAmnesty #PandemicAtonement

The full communication analysis of Professor Oster’s Pandemic Amnesty piece in the Atlantic can be found on my substack here: sarahreynolds.substack.com/p/everyone-is-…