Fantasy Amnesty: the Illusions of Emily Oster.

Emily Oster claims that the decisions she endorsed were “a mistake.” Well, they were a mistake, but not quite in the way that she meant. A discussion on the impossibility of unearned forgiveness .

I know I’m late off the mark here. The talk of the sceptic world in the past week or so has been the article by Emily Oster in the Atlantic with her shrewdly worded request for a “declaration of a pandemic amnesty.” Doubtless, many will have felt utter astonishment at the sheer chutzpah of the woman.

I think of amnesty as a window for the criminal fraternity to avoid prosecution when handing in illegal weapons or drugs. I find it does not quite translate into this on-going situation. The careful reader will have noted her use of the phrase “pandemic amnesty” rather than an amnesty on lies, censorship, name-calling, bullying and accusations of terrorism thrown in our direction. You will further note her suggestion for a declaration rather than a plea on her part for forgiveness.

I’m sure readers will additionally have noted her self-positioning as a victim in all of this.

“Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.””

Oh Emily…. We know what name-calling is like, and I have few condolences to offer Oster on that. However, I get the sense that perhaps Dr Oster is, as we say in Britain, running with the hare and the hounds. She has staked out a territory based upon harms done to children, however, this only seems to extend to school closures. Whereas injections, which are killing and maiming children, are championed. The cynic might think she simply wanted her own children back at school and to hell with the inconvenience of home supervision. However, her various positions have drawn her into a yoga pose within which she has become implacably trapped.

As a Brit, I have no particular axe to grind with Dr Oster. I have had to crib a little from a fellow Substacker Emily Burns to learn more about the woman’s political posturing with American mid-term elections looming. Burns’s comments are illuminating. According to her, Dr Oster’s little game is to win suburban moms back to the Democrat cause over from the Republican wing towards which they have drifted over the past 30 months. Interesting.

I note that Dr Oster’s article is replete with inaccuracies and a carefully curated version of the reality we in the West have all been living for nearly three years now. This has been addressed by many across various platforms. However, I want to pause for a moment to take Dr Oster seriously. It is an ethical dilemma on all fronts, but I think there are some important principles to be unearthed here.

Many will have regarded her use of the word “amnesty” as the faint possibility that she is seeking forgiveness with a faint glimmer of guilt in the air . Her sweet-sounding sentiment is that we need to give one-another a break so that we can “move on.”

“Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.”

Unfortunately, we sceptics have become accustomed to translating that frequent target of blame, “the pandemic,” which is, in itself, a ludicrous stance. Setting aside the issue of whether or not there was a “pandemic” (and many would claim “no” to that) it is rather facile for a highly educated person such as Dr Oster to “blame” a virus or “pandemic” for the serious political decisions that have severely impacted upon millions of people’s lives. Not least of which is the dismantling of freedom and democracy which stands out (to us) like the proverbial sore thumb. Note that she includes the idea that “we still need to solve” the issues arising from the situation. So, there is still more torture to come then. Her words are nothing short of stupid and malicious; and it occurs to me that perhaps some shadowy advisor was their true author.

Oster states:

“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.”

There’s that phrase “build back” again.

That advisor of hers probably reasoned it would be wise to drop the last word, “better,” lest it seem a little too, well, Schwabian. Readers will hear its echo anyway, was perhaps the thinking there. I might also ask, who is the “we” she keeps talking about? Is this the “we” that is “all in it together?” Or a special kind of “we” reserved for elites and those high-profile useful eaters?

As I have mentioned, Dr Oster is not someone I am especially familiar with. Yet given the level of the reaction to her hint for an amnesty, I feel she has now come to symbolise all the political power currently pressing down upon the ordinary person. In what follows, I treat her as though this were actually the case, and so she represents those she has broadly supported throughout the past 30 months.

Amnesty is not forgiveness. But Oster wants it to sound like forgiveness, doesn’t she? Forgiveness is hard. Having made the subject of Religions and Theology central to my life in recent years, it surprised me how little the subject of forgiveness is dealt in its own right. Moreover, it occurs to me that in the secular left leaning world, (Oster’s world) forgiveness is an even rarer bird. Redemption is not their highest priority. Indeed, I wonder if such a concept exists within the realm of leftist ideology. If “cancelled,” how is one able to redeem oneself? Once cancelled, never forgiven it would appear. However, that is not my world. So, I’m taking forgiveness seriously. It is to relevant biblical texts and commentaries that I turn to explore the matter.

What exactly is forgiveness? It is the act of forgiving that allows the healing of a broken relationship to happen. No-one but the actual victim can forgive. There is no proxy forgiveness here.

Forgiveness is dealt with several times in Biblical texts. (Leviticus 19:18, Psalm 103:12, Daniel 9:9, Isaiah 1:18 et al). It is said to be divinely designed from the outset of creation. We all get things wrong in our lives. The process of redemption works to facilitate personal and spiritual growth. Each time we sin and repent, we learn more and grow further. That is progress. And so, there are certain stages recognised in the Judeo-Christian tradition that are necessary before we can even begin to approach the idea of forgiveness.

The first step is to admit guilt and that you have done wrong. Clearly, this is not Dr Oster’s position at all. She claims that the decisions she endorsed were “a mistake.” Well, they were a mistake, but not quite in the way that Dr Oster means. She says “we didn’t know” which cannot be true however one construes it. It is strange that in 2020, so many ordinary people realised what was true instinctively, and yet even highly and eminently qualified persons were publicly shunned, sacked, ridiculed, and silenced when trying to widen the conversation beyond the simplistic and dangerous Fauci protocols.  This occurred all over the Western world. The coordination of such blatant attacks was too slick for this to be otherwise. This has to be because they knew. They knew what they were doing. This chimes with Milton Mayer’s discussion about German Nazi citizens who claimed “not to know” what was happening in their midst. Mayer writes that they did not know because they did not want to know. They did not know, “…but they could have found out…if they had wanted to…”

I suspect that amongst the Oster camp, there are varying degrees of “knowing.” However and whatever, they knew. And continue to know. And if they don’t, they could find out.

The healing process cannot begin if it is based upon a lie. Real repentance begins with recognising the harms done to another. Suggesting that we “declare an amnesty” side-steps the difficulties of self-examination required for repentance. This is not an illegal weapons surrender. A self-obsessed human (rather than God) centred world does not feel the need to undergo truth and reconciliation. However, now that many sense that the going is getting a little tougher, the back-pedalling and requests for amnesties shine forth. Not to mention those mid-terms.

For forgiveness to be even possible, it has to exist within a framework of justice. When one seeks forgiveness, one expresses the desire to live in a just world and a fair society. I am not so sure we are hearing that just yet in camp Oster.

Dr Oster, and the rest of the shower, could you not just admit what you were trying to do? I know; we know; and you know we know what you were (are) trying to do. I look at the miserable outcomes to work out your intentions and they are not good.

The process of forgiveness begins with a period of self-examination. The Covidians need to examine their consciences carefully and admit that they have orchestrated a sequence of events designed to demoralise, destabilise and destroy. (Of course. Otherwise what are you going to build back…?) Most shamefully, that includes the destruction of human life. One only has to see the attempts to manipulate data to understand this given the many reports forthcoming that show rising death rates in countries that have pushed the injections. In addition, the plummeting birth rates and rise in miscarriages. Sudden Adult Death syndrome is now a thing.

The next stage is to put right the wrongs beginning with a full confession and the sincere expression of regret. This means declaring that you are truly sorry. Not sorry you were found out; sorry you did what you did.

The next stage is to repair. You must make every effort to right the wrongs you have done and commit yourself to never repeating that behaviour again. To commit to changing your life and moving away from wrongdoing. Only when these things are done can you approach the sinned against with a request for forgiveness. Of course, in common with the events of WWII, many of the sinned against are no longer with us. Euphemisms aside, let’s say it like it is. They are now dead.

Given that it is not possible for unearned forgiveness to be granted, it forms a stumbling block that is not going away anytime soon. Therefore, it is not the spiteful attitude of the sceptics and anti-vaxxers that prevents your forgiveness, it is the law of justice itself. For the dead, Dr Oster (as the elites’ representative) must sincerely approach God to ask forgiveness. This is because to grant unearned forgiveness is unkind to the sinner, in addition to society at large because it blurs the distinctions of morality.

This whole sorry affair additionally raises deep questions for the sceptic side.

As “sceptics,” what kind of world do we want in the near future? We know what we don’t want, a bio-security state run along big-tech totalitarianism. But what do we want in the positive sense? Naomi Wolf has argued that the end goal of the elites was (is) the disappearance of the pre-March 2020 world forever. That world has gone, and in its place is a hollowed-out shell that in part, resembles that old world but manifests itself as a surreal and dissolving imposter. We may still be grieving for that old, imperfect world; however, I cannot see its resurrection anytime soon.

In brighter moments, I can however, begin to envisage a new way of being. A reset undertaken on our human terms where the corrupted institutions are reformed rather than destroyed and (Ugh) “built back.”

Many have argued for some kind of settlement with those who have instigated or merely followed the destructive dominant narrative. This may be wishful thinking. I have witnessed the palpable anger on the part of those of us trying to wake people up to reality, yet I cannot help but feel that the wishful thinkers have a point. It is infuriating to have been abused in the way that we have. Yet what kind of future do we have without some kind of reconciliation?

The situation has gone on too long to repair our relationships easily. I and many others have lost long standing friendships, and I daresay those losses are as permanent as I imagine them to be. I’ve lost any hope that my former friends and family will reach out and say they are sorry and that they were wrong, sorry to have dismissed my warnings, sorry for the silent treatment, sorry for using unpleasant language or for cutting me out of their lives. I have often wondered how I might react should that gentle miracle happen. I’d like to think that something could be salvaged, that I would not burst out in anger, that we could, somehow repair the world.

Repairing the world, known in Hebrew as Tikkun Olam, is a concept of which Dr Oster would do well to take heed. A fantasy amnesty just does not do it. You don’t get a temporary period of grace in order that you can go back to your old ways. Biblical tradition requires a difficult atonement for one’s sins.

If “building back better” means anything at all, it means paying attention to oneself first before you start trying to build “back” everyone else’s lives for them.

Dr Oster, et al, you have darkened your soul.

And you have a lot of work ahead.

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