Once the hobby of grandmas, today an act of rebellion
Last weekend, I attended a potluck.
I sent out an email to friends saying something like this, “Hey let’s all get together and support this local group that is having a potluck, and don’t just bring one dish, or a sorry little half-dish of something, but let’s all go above and beyond and bring two dishes!”
It was a potluck of health freedom warriors.
It was a potluck of people who had come from not just the immediate area, but also from a few counties over. I myself organized two other events around it and drove from the big city out into the suburbs for it.
This may sound like the most staid thing that can be done in such a time of existential urgency.
But I can think of little else that I would rather have done that afternoon, though I might have added a few additional special loved ones to the attendee list with me so that they too could have benefitted from this time, which I think would have been worth it even if they had had to cross state lines to be there.
You see, 2020 was a year of great division of society. It was a period of splitting families, splitting neighbors, splitting allies. Surely some of that was good and helped provide clarity on where people really stood and what they were really about.
But a big aspect of 2020 and beyond has been a continuation of the thrust of modernity to leave us not just individuals exercising our rights, but leaving us nothing but individuals. Alone, you are easy to pick off. In addition to being an individual, you are involved in community with others in many ways. And in 2020, big brother Orwell told us that if we truly loved one another that we would break community, stay home, mind our own business, stay in our individual enclosures, and distance ourselves even from those with whom we live. That was but a continuation of the work of modernity in this era. In that regard, 2020 was not a radical departure, but was more of the same.
And now I am calling on you to recognize that, to recognize the division, the loneliness, and the isolation that was at the heart of these past three years — the division, loneliness, and isolation that took a great toll on my family and maybe yours. I can no longer count on my hands the number of loved ones I lost, who, more than anything, simply gave up.
Yes, the jab killed some of them, I am sure. The health protocols killed some of them. But the over-arching killer was the psychopathology that had us see man as enemy and not as loved one. It was more of the thrust of modernity, more of the influence of the world, a lot less of what Christ called on man to do.
Every awful human trait seemed to be exacerbated in 2020 and beyond, as people chose to watch television rather than to stand alongside mom’s bed as she died. Truthfully, it was A LOT easier to sit home and binge-watch the latest Netflix degeneracy and stuff your face than to get into a hospital. This speaks to the psychopathology of the period. The hospital didn’t want you there. The hospital didn’t want grandma or mom or sister or wife or dad or brother or child to have you there. The hospital wanted them to die so that there was one less living, breathing being adding to the gross surplus of infection spreading in the hospital environment.
This was all part of the psychopathology of 2020 and beyond. A human life has come to mean far less than it did prior to 2020. All of the feel-good, helper professions climbed all over each other to be the first and the loudest to announce human life not as worthy of protection, but to announce human life as less valuable than it had ever been.
They were once the do-gooder backstops to that devaluation of human life. They were once the ones announcing that life had meaning. No more. Times have changed. Many on the political left have shown their true stripes. It was just a matter of time. To anyone who ever announces that socialism is different than communism, you lived through the period of the granola, laid-back, social-democrat turning into the rabid, corona communist. It is not an anomaly. It is what always happens with socialism. They have their usual fringe groups that they form into alliances. Their narrative for years is how sweet and sensitive they are and how much they care about being sweet and sensitive and just.
And then they drop that hammer. And it becomes so clear. The socialist is the communist who has not yet revealed their true stripes. That is the truth of the matter.
If you take to heart, what took place the last three years, it will likely not be hard for you to do exactly what I ask you to do here:
1.) Identify the people who matter most to you.
2.) Make lots and lots and lots of excuses to just be together with them.
3.) Do that over and again, even if they don’t understand what you are doing, even if they don’t really want to be there, even if they had a Netflix special they were hoping to watch that day, have no fear about twisting their arms to be there. Eventually they will thank you.
Make this a year to do extra with the people you love. Make this a year to invest extra time in the family. Make this a year to go above and beyond with the people who mean the most to you.
Look around every corner for excuses to bond, to make new traditions, to revive the old, or at least that of the old that is worth continuing.
Be grateful that 2020 was a time of separation and clarity, and now use that clarity to be all the more intentional with the people with whom you choose to surround yourself.
You are the sum of the five people you surround yourself with most. So this intentionality means a great deal. And this time of clarity is a great opportunity to force you to change.
But make no mistake. Though, our rights are individual. Though, our choices are individual. Though, we will each one day stand before our maker as individuals and be judged as we give a reckoning of how we chose to spend each day of the several short decades we were given. Though, there are individual aspects to us, we are social creatures.
Do not attempt to live long in the artificial loneliness that modernity forced you into when we momentarily made the mistake of allowing pencil necked bureaucrats like Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, and Adam Schiff control how life was spent. The list of who these people are and how uninspiring your life would look at their direction is endless.
So draw a clear line.
The past was the past.
And today is so important.
Go for a walk, just because. Turn off the TV and play a board game together, just because. Turn down the radio and talk in the car together, just because. Go to church on Sunday, just because. Stick around to talk after, just because. Stop in at the local hardware store and give yourself a little more time to stay there and chew the fat, just because. Round your favorite friends up and do something together, just because. Round your favorite activists up and do something, just because. Round your favorite family members up and do something, just because.
You see.
In 2023.
Having a potluck really is a revolutionary act. It is an act that stands against all of the nonsense of 2020 and beyond. It draws a clear line between past and present and makes a statement that you care about the people that you surround yourself with. You will be intentional. You will be the social being that you were meant to be. You will be a leader among men, and you will be a servant among men, even when it is something as simple as getting some folks together, just because.
Because having a potluck really is a revolutionary act.
One that stands against the nonsense of 2020, and one that reminds you and others that you are not all in this together and that you are not all in this alone. You are in this with whom you choose to be in this with.
And you, my dear potluck planner. Hike organizer. Family trip proposer. Person who set up lunch out with your health freedom pals, just because. You are the revolutionary who stands against the nonsense.
For that, I thank you.
Allan Stevo