Reprinted with permission from Dr. Naomi Wolf’s Substack.com.
When, in Fall of 2019, I moved out of what had been my home in the West Village, I thought I was simply moving from one place to another. I was excited to build a home again, this time in the South Bronx.
Brian and I ultimately lived in the South Bronx for only four months — until March 11 2020, when we looked at one another and realized we had to get into his SUV and keep driving North. As I described in my book The Bodies of Others, when then-Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Broadway was closing — just like that, a CCP-style state fiat, not an American-style individuals-dealing-with-an-emergency announcement — we both realized that bad things were coming, though whether natural or political we could not yet tell.
So twenty years of my possessions had stayed for the past two and a half years in a storage unit.
I was opening boxes now that were not just from another place — as is usual when you move; not just from another time; but I was opening boxes that were from literally another world. I don’t know that such a thing has happened in quite this way in history before.
Some items memorialized normal losses and change. Others, though, revealed that long-revered institutions had lost all morality and authority.
Here was a grey sweater that had belonged to my father, who had been a writer. It still had the line of loose threads along the clavicle, the little gaps opening up in the sewn-together pieces, that were characteristic of his distinguished-but-absent-minded-professor look. Dr Leonard Wolf could wear a moth-eaten sweater such as that one, on a street in New York City, and still look like a Byronic poet preoccupied with his latest sonnet. He looked stylish even when he was bedridden — even when advancing Parkinson’s meant he could no longer communicate with words, his treasure. He was charismatic even when gestures failed him; when my husband, an Irish raconteur, sat by his bedside, telling stories to make him laugh. He managed to have elan even when Brian had to ask him to make a sound to let him know if he wanted the stories to continue, and my dad could only groan: yes, more stories.
The stories have ended now for my father; at least the earthly ones. But the sweater still carries that wintry, breezy scent that was his while he was on this earth, telling us stories, more stories.
I folded my father’s sweater for the mending pile.
A small brown dog toy surfaced, chewed so thoroughly in one section that the white lining of the toy remained. The little dog who had enjoyed the toy, of course, the much-mourned Mushroom, is no more. His dog tag is nailed to a tree that leans over the river in the woods, near where we now live.
I put the chewed-up toy on the discards pile.
There was the little white wooden armoire I had hand-painted — amateurishly but with love — for a child’s room. The armoire was not needed any more. Everyone had grown up.
There were boxes and boxes of what had once been exciting, culturally meaningful CDs and DVDs. I sighed — what to do with these now? The technology itself was obsolete.
Then there were the pillows. Floral pillows. Tufted pillows. Even I knew these were tasteless, and I’d known that even at the time I had bought them. When my loved ones were old enough to notice aesthetics, they would chorus, when I brought home a new find: “Mom! Please! No more florals!”
I saw that I had been obsessed then with accumulating not only florals, but warm colors — cranberry and scarlet, terra-cotta and apricot and peach.
With the eyes of the present, and now in a happy marriage, I realized what had been pushing me to acquire all of these redundant soft florals. I had longed for domesticity and warmth, but had been, as a single mother then, dating the wrong kind of man to get domesticity and warmth. So I had unconsciously kept choosing softness and coziness in decor, because I had missed it in my relationship.
The man, a gifted, mercurial charmer, had also, in the past few years, passed away; young; of a wasting cancer.
I sighed again, and put the floral pillows in the “donations” pile.
####
Other items in the opened boxes, however, did not speak of organic loss and change but rather of worlds of authority that had seemed sparkling and real in 2019, but that have revealed themselves since then to be seething with rot.
Here, for instance, was the brown, pleated, Grecian-style dress, with the bared arms and gathered waist, that I had worn to a wedding on Martha’s Vineyard in the early 2000s.
Brown is a color I almost never wear, and I had never worn that Grecian style of formal dress briefly fashionable in the Friends era; so I remembered, as I shook it out into the sunlight of two decades later, that I had felt quite daring that night.
The wedding had been in an event hall nestled in the dunes. Local seafood hors d’oeuvres had been passed on silver trays. The bride had been smoldering and lovely in a white lace Vera Wang (always Vera Wang) dress. All was as it should have been.
The wedding had brought together White House politicos, Washington Post op ed writers and reporters, brash young New York City political speechwriters and campaign managers, and trendy nonfiction writers who were already making names for themselves chronicling the scene. We were all in our mid- to late 30s — we were fomenting change, approving of ourselves, making a difference; we were kind of like The West Wing, we thought — (one of our friends consulted for it) — idealistic, unintentionally a bit chic, madly hopeful.
We were the scene.
I almost recoiled now with sorrow and anger. I folded up that dress, thinking about those institutions that had undergirded our optimism that warm night, when our confidence and certainty had rung out onto the warm, salty breezes, along with the sounds of the ultra-hip blues band.
The major newspapers? The once-young journalists? The last two and a half years showed them to be shills for what have been revealed to be genocidal imperial powers. They became media versions of sex workers, scheduling time to deliver blow jobs to whomever would write them the biggest checks.
The once-young, West-Wing-style politicos? The last two and a half years showed them willing to become policy wonks for a global march to tyranny that instrumentalized a murderous medical experiment on their fellow humans; on their very constituents.
Where now were those institutions that at that wedding in the early 2000s, filled us with pride and a sense of mission as we took part in building them?
Imploded morally; left without a shred of authority or credibility.
I put the brown dress on the Goodwill pile.
I turned to an old scheduling notebook — it recorded some visits to Oxford. We’d been at a dinner party in North Oxford, hosted by the Warden of Rhodes House, attended by the Vice Chancellor of the University, as I recall, and by many other luminaries. Indeed, the evolutionary biologist Dr Richard Dawkins had been a guest, pestered, as he no doubt often was, by a dinner attendee who had wanted to talk to him about his atheism.
It had been a sparkling evening, elegant and urbane. I’d felt privileged to be at a table where some of the greatest of minds of my time were gathered, and where the very leader of a great university was helping to convene us.
I loved Oxford with a pure love. The university had sustained a vibrant commitment to the principles of reason and to freedom of speech, for over nine hundred years. It had supported the asking of questions when it was dangerous to ask questions; from just after what used to be called the Dark Ages; through the High Middle Ages; through the Reformation; through the Enlightenment. It had tended faithfully, through the darkest of times, the bright, unquenchable flame of the wakeful mind of Europe.
That – the legacy of critical thinking of the West – was Oxford’s legacy.
But —in 2021— it had complied with a requirement that its students endure “online learning”— a demand that had no basis in reason or in the natural world.
This damage done to its trusting young people was a travesty, in my mind, of the great innovation that the University of Oxford had given to the world – the tutorial system, in which being physically present with a couple of other students and with a Don (professor) in his or her study, opens up the dimension of rigorous scholarly discourse in a magical and irreplaceable way.
‘Online learning’? In Oxford? An institution that had survived plagues and epidemics that dwarfed the respiratory disease of 2020-2022, that had survived wars and revolutions, and that had taught students nobly in the face of crises of all kinds?
I did not know if I would ever go back to Oxford; and, if I did, what I would find there or how I would feel. I did not even know if today’s Oxford would welcome me back, being, as I was now in 2022, though I had not been in 2019, a “reputational refugee”, having been cancelled institutionally in most of what had been my traditional intellectual homes.
My heart hurt once more. I put the old notebook in the pile for “storage.”
I unfolded a tablecloth I had bought in India. I’d visited a literary conference in Tamil Nadu in about 2005, and had brought the lovely fabric home as a souvenir.
A flood of memories surged as I looked at the once-familiar pattern.
I’d hosted so many parties in my little West Village apartment, centering on that hand-blocked tablecloth. I’d set a big pot of turkey chili — my go-to option, the only dish I could not ruin — pile cut-up baguettes on platters, and assemble bottles of cheap red wine on that tablecloth. Thus I could, as a broke single mom, affordably entertain — and those parties, as I recall them, were fantastic. Crowded, lively, buzz-y, with a sexy, intellectually engaging vibe. Filmmakers, actors, journalists, artists, novelists, academics, poets; a handful of the less-boring venture capitalists; all crowded together, spilling out into the kitchen, the hallways. At a certain point in the evening the noise would crescendo — (my neighbors were tolerant) — into the happy roar of new ideas clashing or merging; new friendships, new contacts, new lovers connecting and engaging.
In 2019, I had been part of the New York City social scene. My life was full of events, panels, lectures, galas, the watching of rehearsals, theatrical opening nights, film premieres, gallery openings. I thought that my place in the society in which I traveled was unquestioned, and that I was in a world in which this calendar of events, these parties, this community, above all this ethos, would last forever.
Where was that society now? Artists, filmmakers, journalists — all of the people who are supposed to say No to discrimination, No to tyranny — they had scattered, had cowered, had complied. They had groveled.
The same people who had been the avant garde of a great city, had, as I have written elsewhere, gone right along with a society in which a person such as I am, cannot enter a building.
And I had fed those people. I topped up their drinks with my affordable red wines.
I had welcomed them into my home.
I had supported their careers. I had fostered connections on their behalf. I had blurbed their books, had promoted their gallery openings, because — because we were allies, right? We were intellectuals. We were artists. We were even activists.
And yet these people — these same people — had complied — eagerly! With zero resistance! Immediately! With a regime that is appearing day by day to be about as bad in some ways as that of Marshal Philippe Petain’s in Vichy France.
Unthinkable now that I had treated them once as colleagues, as friends.
I had been made into a nonperson, overnight. Now it turns out, as America First Legal found via a recent lawsuit, that the CDC had actively colluded with Twitter officials, in reaction to an accurate tweet of mine calling attention to menstrual problems post-mRNA vaccination, to erase me from the worlds of both legacy media and digital discourse. A smear campaign that was global in its dimensions had been orchestrated with Twitter by CDC’s Carol Crawford, as the internal emails revealed by America First Legal seemed to show. This past week, another lawsuit, by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, revealed that the White House itself colluded with Big Tech to censor American citizens. My truthful tweet was in that tranche as well.
As if we were characters in a Lewis Carroll book, the world of meritocracy had been inverted.
The highest level of government collusion was directed at me the minute I did just exactly what I have done for 35 years; that is to say, the minute I raised, in summer of 2021, a grave women’s health concern. Confusingly, my advocating in exactly this way for serious women’s health journalism and for proper medical responses to women’s emerging sexual and reproductive health issues, had made me a media darling for 35 years. Indeed, this practice had made me a media darling among those very people, who had eaten my food and drunk my wine, while sitting around this very tablecloth.
But now, when I did the exact same thing for which they had long applauded me, I was cast immediately into social outer darkness.
Why? Because the times had changed.
And because the scale of the revenue generated for them by supporting flat out lies, had changed.
Did any of those right-on people — many of them famous feminists, male and female – speak up for me? Did any of them publicly say, Wait a minute, whatever the truth may turn out to be (and I was right, right, right) – this is a serious women’s health issue? Let’s explore it?
Not. A. One.
The bold, brave, edgy New York City avant-garde, whom I had hosted for twenty years?
They were scared off by Twitter.
That world surely shunned me, and made me a nonperson, overnight. The power of the Federal government is pretty stunning, especially in collusion with the biggest content companies in the world, when you are on the receiving end of being erased by them.
That world rejected me.
But I rejected it right back.
#####
I live in the woods now. Instead of the glitter and din of galas, the chatter of the literati, Brian and I are surrounded by crowds of tall, solemn trees; the excitement of our days centers on sightings of cranes and hawks; the dramas we face involve living near coyotes and rattlesnakes, and evading while yet marveling at the resident adolescent bear. We are making friends with those who grow food, in anticipation of needing to be self-sufficient. We just picked up from farmer acquaintances, to store in a massive freezer, something that was described with a phrase I had never heard in my previous, Door-Dash life: our quarter of a cow.
I was gifted a .22 by Brian. He recently bought me a Ruger as well. The world is falling apart even as a new world is emerging. A peaceful person though I am, I realize that we may someday need to hunt for food or perhaps need, God forbid, to defend our home. I am learning to shoot.
The old world, the pre-2019 world, is a scene of wreckage and carnage to me.
The old world I left behind, and that left me behind, is not a post-COVID world.
It is a post-truth world, a post-institutional world.
The institutions that supported the world that existed when these 2019 boxes were packed, have all collapsed; in a welter of corruption, in an abandonment of public mission and public trust.I look at them now the way Persephone looked backward without regret at Hades.
I am living in a new world already — a world that most people can’t see yet as it is still being envisioned and built up – painfully, daringly, laboriously. Though it exists at this point in history more conceptually and even spiritually than it does materially and politically, this new world is my home.
Who else lives in the new world?
My husband, who was not afraid to fight for America, and who is not afraid to defend me.
A new constellation of friends and allies, that have emerged since these boxes were packed away, and since the worlds that are represented as if sealed inside them, collapsed with rot.
I work and party now with people who love their country and tell the truth. The people with whom I spend time now are this era’s versions of Tom Paine, Betsy Ross, Phyllis Wheatley and Ben Franklin. I don’t know how these folks vote. I don’t know that they know how I vote. I don’t care. I know that they are sterling human beings, because they are willing to protect the cherished ideals of this beautiful experiment, our native land.
Life experiences don’t unite these people with whom I hang out now; social status does not unite them — they come from all walks of life, from every “class”, and they pay little or no attention to status or class markers. Politics don’t unite these people. What unites them in my view is the excellence of their characters, and their fierce commitment to liberty; to the ideals of this nation.
Oddly, living now in the purple-to-red rural America that my former “people,” the blue-state elites, are conditioned to view with suspicion and distrust, I also have more personal freedom than I did as a member of the most privileged class. The most privileged class does not have the greatest privilege of all, that of personal liberty: it is a class that is continually anxious and status-insecure, its members often scanning the room for a more important conversation, its collective mind continually exerting subtle control, both socially and professionally, over other members of the “tribe.”
My former elite network paid lip service to “diversity”; but there was a deadening sameness and conformity in our demographics, and that conformity also policed our world views, our voting patterns, even our kids’ schools and our travel destinations.
In contrast, people here in deep purple-red country, the ones whom we know anyway, give each other the assumed permission to differ, to have uncensored opinions, to be free.
Even my social media community is not the world I left behind in 2019; I can’t even get on those platforms any more, as I am extra super duper ultra cancelled.
But I don’t know if I’d even want to be in those conversations now; the discourse of the elite left these days, “my people”, seems fearful and in-lockstep, scolding and rigid, when I hear exchanges of it.
Now, in 2022, my online community is made up of a world of people whom I never knew existed — or rather a world of people I was conditioned ignorantly to stereotype, and to fear; I am in contact now with people who care about America, who believe in God or in a greater meaning in this world, people who put family first, and who turn out — who knew? — to be vastly openminded, civilized and decent.
I spend time with people who love their communities, speak out for their actual brothers and sisters, meaning humanity; risk themselves to save the lives of strangers; and care about actual fact-based journalism, actual science-based medicine, actual science-based science.
These days I chat online with people who tell me, unfashionably but beautifully, they are praying for me.
In spite of fighting an apocalypse every day, how can I help but be so much happier now?
*****
I no longer want to sit at a table with people who call themselves journalists, but who deny or trivialize injuries to women at a scale that beggars belief; who give Pfizer and the FDA a pass, and ask them no real questions.
I no longer want to sit at a table with people who are okay with the murder of children, the poisoning of breast milk, the burdening of women with the twenty different names in the Pfizer documents that all amount to menstrual pain and agony and the ruination of women’s fertility. I don’t want to do anything but prosecute the people who took money to cover up the damaging of women by means of “reproductive disorders,” at scale.
These people, “my people”, who were once so erudite, so witty, so confident, so ethical, so privileged – the people of the elite world contained in the 2019-and-before boxes — pretty and well-spoken as they once were, turn out, with the twist of just a couple of years, and just a bucketload or two of bribe money, to be revealed as monsters and barbarians.
I left the rest of the boxes to open another day. There is no rush.
The institutions the boxes memorialize are dead; and maybe they never really existed, as we believed them to be, in the first place.
I put the red, purple and blue tablecloth on the “wash and store to use again” pile. Then I took it home with me.
People who still have their honor intact, will sit around our table.
So funny, I never wear brown either, but I did wear a sleeveless brown formal gown which was quite pretty, to my only son’s wedding in 2015, and have since donated it.
I feel you pain over the loss of what you thought was a life in 2019. And now, look how much better and real your life is now. Honest and authentic!
My son now has 3 boys – 5, 3, 6 months.
I swore the vax would be the hill I was willing to die on.
I spent hours and hours putting together information and begging, but they gave both the 5 and 3 two shots.
Now I am praying the UK stopping the shots will be the linchpin that will save the 6 month old (who was conceived when his mom had both shots and the booster during pregnancy).
I think they got saline – not the toxic batch. Not sure about the boys. I live in terror!
Thanks for everything you have done and continue to do. You are vital to America right now.
Brucha Haba’ah. That’s Hebrew for welcome. Welcome to our world, just over the bridge, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Not the gentrified, urban revitalized, chic Williamsburg, but to the communities chassidim, who’ve been here since Worl War 2. We’ve always been skeptical of the “secular” society and never ever bought, hook, line and sinker, their latest and greatest ideas beliefs. Many of us, have been fighting big pharma since long before the most recent flu epidemic aka covid19. But my real welcome to you is to finding your fellow Americans who haven’t drank the kool-aid. Call it it purple red America, I call it America. The AT website had a columnist, Loyd Marcus, of blessed memory, who “self identified” as an “unhyphenated” American. He was a great American and from this article it appears that you have found yourself in the comfortable company of many like minded folk. You are a fortunate woman. I sign off, as an unhyphenated Jewish man, fondly, Akiva
Excellent!
Is David Horowitz suffering from vaccine side effects? Just asking.
You are always suffering from Marxist side effects.
Sad, but oh so true. At least you have a husband who shares your views. I am a divorced mother of three whose children and siblings think I am a lunatic. I have had to hide my views to retain any kind of “friends” or social life at all. The worst part is that I live under the tyranny of Justin Trudeau!
Sympathy to you, Jennifer. I am a married mother of three grown men, two of whom have broken their father’s and my hearts by voting Democrat. The third one still leans libertarian but one never knows with kids, and he attended a (very left-wing) elite law school, so we can only hope he is still ours to some small extent and does not yet belong to the Evil Empire. My siblings and I barely speak, but when we do it’s civil. They have no idea how far to the right I am by their standards and, given their advanced ages and poor health, I would rather they not. But as you say of Naomi, at least I have a husband with whom to share my views and disappointments. That’s a great gift and I know that some day one or the other of us will lose it to the inevitabilities of mortality, so I do not take it lightly.
Stay strong and resolute. G0d is with you and He will see you through. Cast your burdens upon Him; He can shoulder them far more easily than you can.
This is a great article by an author who has recognized that the world that she was a prominent member has lost its ability to think, speak and live independently and has been cowered by the woke world
I live in your world. Welcome.
I used to teach your essays in my Rhetoric and Writing courses.
When our department diverged from ancient rhetoric and became just another forum for critical theory, I became quietly radicalized.
Then, after I was ousted for being a misogynist (!) by a department chair who’d known me for twenty years, I came out as a Trump voter.
This is a beautiful account, one that reminds me of all the parties in Hillcrest and Del Mar and La Jolla with colleagues, including the department chair who early-retired me.
If you develop the habit of constantly censoring yourself, it saves the government the trouble of doing it for you. If you allow words to be treated as violence,you lose the ability to think and communicate without fear.
Love this! Can I steal it?
I took the red pill in 2007, it was a process
I felt lonel at first , friends and family went by the wayside
But I would do it all over again
Welcome to the tribe Naomi
Your writing drew me right into your world, and left me feeling as you do. I miss my world of sharing opinions and speaking about how we felt about things in the world. I miss my friends who wouldn’t have taken anything unknown before but joined in lock step when the government told them to take the shot.
Mostly I miss the feeling of innocence we had. Of trust. Of assurance our government was attempting to look out for us.
The evil was right there with us all the time, and we entertained it. Not knowing we were it’s intended target.
Thank you Naomi. Leave the Dem party and become an independent. Owe no allegiance to any party.
Thank you for this essay. It really does feel like a world has passed. I wonder if this is how so many felt shortly after WWI, when all the old institutions had failed, brought down disaster on the heads of those who had trusted in them, and then passed away, ushering in a new and more hellish world.
Anyways, I know you are not a New Testament person, but am sure you will appreciate Romans I; 18-32, as it pretty well captures the sorts of people and society we formally called “us”. An allusion to “Whited Sepulchers” also comes to mind.
Many blessing on you and yours in this brave new world.
Western civilization opened its veins in a place called Marne in September 1914 to begin its long suicide by exsanguination and the destruction of three and a half millennia of glory. The end has been coming, gradually over the past century and at some point, suddenly, but coming it is. There is still time to bind the wrists of our civilization but not a great deal of time. Adam Smith noted in a different context that there is a lot of ruin in a country, but ruin came to England eventually. And now it comes to all of us, including her daughters.
This article and your reply ~ My day is brighter. My hope is stronger. My faith is strengthened. Thank you both!
Very nice article and confirmation that most of us in “flyover” country are just plain decent Americans who live their lives TRUTHFULLY! The so called “elites” you found out were just phony friends were the first to turn their backs – you’re SO much better off without them. Now you have a warm and caring HUSBAND and your life is much better. That is the way God intended it to be but , sadly, so many young people today will never know the joys and memories that you have. I pity them! All their self indulgence and wasted years will mean NOTHING when they get to the age where their brains scream “what was I thinking”!! Most of us who live “simple” lives – grew up poor – married and THEN had children – worked most of our lives – grew old together – and Love Our Nation are looked upon as “deplorables” or “extremists”! What a world the biden bunglers have created!!
The bold, brave, edgy New York City avant-garde, whom I had hosted for twenty years?
They were scared off by Twitter.
=========
As Dennis Prager is wont to say: these people are more afraid of The New York Times than of God.
What a beautiful and melancholy essay. What I miss are the happy warriors. Those who recognized the battle early but fought with confidence that we would prevail. There are still some but I realize now they existed in a system we no longer have. If we wanted to live a rural life style and become self-sufficient, well, this was America go and have at it. Our systems of government would protect our right to do so. Now those same systems are destroying every pathway out so reliance and control by them is all that’s left. You’re right. I wonder if that world actually existed? No. I believe it existed. I can’t believe how quickly we are losing it.
Wonderful essay; I wish more people in positions of influence had such an awakening, the “scales falling from their eyes”, as it were.
Welcome to The Dark Side – we have cookies!
Your life and path has a parallel to the great Whittaker Chambers, who found peace, life, and safety on his farm. Like you, a truly blessed writer. Like you, a deeply feeling and religious person. May God Bless you and we thank Him for the gift of your work.
Powerful writing, Ms. Wolf, but I knew your work of old when we both had a different way of looking at the world and would expect no less of you. I have always respected your writing.
We have changed, you and I; I to live a G0d-cerntered life as an “ultra-Orthodox” Jew (whatever that means) and you to continue your writing, but reaching a different and far broader readership. To mind your current readership is a good deal more intelligent and tolerant than your old friends, the Pretty People.
May the G0d of Jacob bless you and yours, and may you continue to see and tell the truth. You have many friends in some of the most unlikely places now and we rely on you, your love of truth and ability to dig it out wherever you need to look, and your eloquence, to enlighten our lives.
Wonderful comments. How I wish we could upvote them! I see a lot of new names and would be happy to encourage them with some applause. How about that as the next feature for this new communications software?
Naomi,
Welcome to our world. If it cannot be preserved, may Horatius at the Bridge be our epitaph.
Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright : “A moment’s courage or a lifetime of regret – that’s always the choice.”
It’s a line from a British television series, I know, but it’s been a guiding principle for me lately. ‘Go along, get along’ has no mettle, no honor. Moreover, increasingly, I hold the ‘go along’ crowd in very low regard.
Thank you for articulating the sentiment that many of us have been feeling for some time now.
I leaped when I read your quote of Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright. I, too, have often cited it in recent times, capturing so well as it does the omnipresent choice before us. Here’s another, nonfictional quote along the same lines that you might like as well. Without doubt, the qualities of guardedness, heedfulness and wariness are necessary in the conduct of battle, but it is a postulate that should be accompanied by the succinct response of Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, who became a hero to the world for his defense of Belgium during its sufferings after the German invasion in World War II: “When prudence is everywhere, courage is nowhere.”
Love your story. Wish i had met you while you were in your metamorphosis stage!.
An excellent essay, and welcome to the free world…while it lasts.
However, if you haven’t changed how you vote, then you’ve learned nothing. You’ll continue to cultivate the seeds which led to this.
I wish you the best, and I hope you’ve *truly* learned.
In the last several years I’m seeing a new class of news article, that consists entirely of reporting on one Twitter battle or another. It’s as if those mostly-inane and usually vicious “discussions” actually ARE news, rather than the tribalist BS they really are.
And the ledes for those articles are the best part, always claiming that someone said something on Twitter, which caused said person to be “crushed” or “blown up” or “defenestrated” (or whatever) by the mob. This sort of thing knows no party either. Apparently there’s a deep-seated need out there for confirmation that “bad people” are getting roundly chastised. Oy.
Beautiful. Your writing is exquisite. I share your grief. You are one brave woman. You are protected by the Divine and loved by many. ❤️
Beautiful. Your writing is exquisite. I share your grief. You are one brave woman. You are protected by the Divine and loved by many. ❤️
You shouldn’t be grieving but rejoicing! You finally saw “their” true colors!
I forget who said ‘I’m a moderate so the right is the only side that will have me’, but they came to the same realization Naomi did.
Well Dr. Wolf, you haven’t seen anything yet. Read Revelation Chapter 13 if you want to know what is to come.
Im sure that David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz can pull out the same map from their lifes glove box. Its an honorable journey. Glad you made it across.
Ms. Wolf has always had a gift of being able to craft insightful, brilliant narratives, however this one stands as perhaps one of her greatest contributions. Why? Not because it is well-crafted but because it seems to have bypassed the normal creative pathways and come directly from her soul. A soul that has been betrayed by false gods, and begun the process of healing with the salve of Truth and Enlightenment.
I cried when I read this, realizing more fully all that has been lost. Whether virtuous or contrived our public institutions felt real and provided a framework where we could plan, plot, and dream. The past 2 years have served to rip the mask off of that facade revealing the hideous Truth of what has become of our society – and our nation. Somehow the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is today lead by a group of dishonest, corrupt, incompetent grifters – many of whom are truly evil, and the rest simply opportunistic cowards. Cheered on, of course, by a sniveling elite caste and a catamite barking seal media establishment.
For Ms. Wolf moving to the woods is likely both metaphorical and physical; an escape from the wreckage of a previous life as well as, I assume, an opportunity to regroup and rejoin the fight, albeit with new ammunition.
The time for heroes is upon us once again; time to rise up and reclaim that which generations of our betters fought, bled and died for. We must restore honor and integrity to our society before it is completely lost. The fight will be long and difficult, but the rewards are real. We all need to stop “phoning it it” and set about the difficult tasks ahead of us. Naomi Wolf has described the battlefield and the enemies we face. We must now engage.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure
Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
Wolf is a sane liberal (old school) voice in a world that has embraced authoritarian group think and foolish acquiescence to ever increasing government control of our daily lives.
The world needs 100,000 more voices like hers.
We moved out of the heart of Silicon Valley, ( where they are STILL wearing masks) to a rural red area in California. It has been wonderful. The jab was the final straw. One of my son’s was at risk of losing his 20 year career due to not talking the shot and it was horrible. Right at the turning point where he looked at me and said Mom, what am I going to do? Things started calming down. My daughter is a teacher, and in rural, they allowed them to test each week.
We all got the Covid and never got it again. In the meantime everyone we know who got the shots has had Covid multiple times. A dear friend of ours is a cardiologist at Stanford. He has been telling us horror stories about teenagers with heart problems from the shot, that will be on medication and cannot play sports for the REST OF THEIR LIVES.
This has been such a horrible thing. The lies, the cover ups, the persecution of anyone who questioned the jab.
I quit a job I had for two decades with a liberal supposedly “artist and freedom lovers, but in SF thinking” non profit, because they were so hateful and insane over Covid and this shot. Naomi, I knew I was surrounded by liberals that thought they were better than all conservatives, and I saw so much hate from them and rage once Trump won, but the Covid insanity was the final straw for us. We moved and changed our lives like you did. Congratulations. I still am shocked when people say, God Bless you or we will pray for you just as a normal thing during the day.
I’ve always been Libertarian-Conservative, but I now think of myself mostly as a Constitutional Conservative. While I was in the New Hampshire House, I put together this video. In my opinion, a large part of the problem is structural.
Powerful; poignant and beautifully written. You humanize the passage and meaning of time like no other.
But like David Horowitz (and, in the most ancient comparison, Abraham himself) you’ve crossed over to the other side and now, obviously comfortable, prolific and eminently convincing about your current view of the world you once famously inhabited and, though wholly well-meaning, somewhat naively helped to develop, see the decrepit, self-serving and self-destructive, pseudo-liberalism — the old Jacobin-inspired Left in all its shameless and odious, blood-thirsty and aimless nihilism and anarchy — to champion, rather, a relatively truer, more authentic, much closer to real, better world for all.
Such a wonderful comment on our lives today. I appreciate Naomi Wolf and her courage to name our prison guard and celebrate her new awareness. I am trying to be more brave in my own world about my own observations, seen over decades; where my values, politics, religion and community changed. I live in a blue state and had an ‘outsider’ experience while teaching in public schools, not because I infused lessons with any political slant, but because I taught them at all. Teaching history from amazingly good, new history curriculum was not accepted in our district; it was a rebellious act to be denounced in every way except using the word ‘forbidden’. My students learned about freedoms, wrote what they learned about their protected rights in their own words, and enjoyed it. I even caught them acting out scenes from the Civil War at recess, when I was called to settle an argument between two students who had take the parts of Grant and Lee. So funny! I did not know of ONE other teacher at the school teaching the history curriculum; all were told, ‘You don’t have time for it.’ When my students did well on standardized tests, I found out that the rumor was I was cheating, giving them answers, because it didn’t match their low expectations for our students. I loved teaching, loved my students and their humble, wonderful parents. My husband and I are planning our move to a red state to join one of our sons and his family who moved a year ago. Two of our sons are in red states now. I don’t know how else to survive emotionally and socially, even spiritually, although I belong to a conservative church. This last week I listened to someone take advantage of a speaking opportunity to declare what a great leader Zelensky was, hold up his picture, describe all his sterling qualities, and demand we all hold him in high esteem. Too depressing.
Writing more than 3,ooo years ago onward, the Jewish Sages detailed in their esoteric texts what actually is occurring in our world today, now in the year 5782.
Precisely.
And it is a false world, עַלמָא דְשִׁקְרָא, and it is racing to its conclusion.
Evil has succeeded extraordinarily thus far because it has successfully eliminated God Almighty from public and much private knowledge and discourse. The Left’s entire agenda is against God, even to the point of being nonsensical and ridiculous. Good people haven’t a clue as to what is occurring because God and Godliness are, via gentlemen’s agreement, taboo, forbidden, the stuff of social discomforture.
On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we plead with God Almighty the Creator, Giver of Life:
תַעֲבִיר מֶמְשֶׁלֶת זָדוֹן מִן הָאָרֶץ
Remove the Conspiracy of Evil from the earth.
He will. The Sabbatical Year is nearly over.
Fascinating comments. As a non-Jew I would appreciate the favor of an explanation better suited to a lay audience.
Welcome to the real grown up world.
Thank you Naomi Wolf for being among the first to give to give us the gift of truth on the subject of forced vaccinations. My three grown daughters and I were skeptics from the beginning, but through you and a few others we now have the actual facts. I enjoyed reading about your journey to the truth and the reality we all face now, in today’s world.
Naomi,
Welcome to a kinder “world”, where people accept and love each other (hopefully) with a humility that understands that we are all created human beings – with no inherent superiority or sense of deserving! The old “world” is just the opposite – demand for control, meanness, underlying anger, inhumanity.
Dvorak’s New World Symphony is a musical picture of finally finding a true home. It sounds like you have found yours – may the Lord bless you! I hope you find a home that will never disappoint – Further Up and Further In! Abraham was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. {Hebrews 11:10}
C.S. Lewis says it best – “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy,
the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Great column. I have been a Pat Buchanan “peasant with a pitchfork” for 30 + years. I am used to elites of both parties mocking me & squashing common sense. Out of Afghanistan now into Ukraine. Forever wars.
It is obviously worse now that old ladies have to let men in their locker room showers & confused little kids are medical guinea pigs.
We still must trust God, do good & pray for our country.
Dr Fuaci is a total phonie as authentic as a 3 Dollar Bill and as Honest as a Thief
What a well-written post and so relatable, Naomi. Similarly, my husband and I elected to “escape” from California nearly 10 years ago, primarily because the place, even back then, had changed to the point we no longer felt we belonged there. Mind you, both my parents were born there and my maternal grandfather literally walked there from Texas as a young child, alongside his parents in a covered wagon when they could not keep their cattle alive due to a devastating Texas draught at the turn of the last century. While I have lived in other places during my adult life, we always made our way back to California because it was our home and always so beautiful. But just as you chose to leave South Bronx, we eventually chose to leave Southern California for Florida, even before it became a well-worn migration path. We have no intention of going back this time. We truly love our new life in Florida and we indeed feel we belong here. To ensure Florida remains the land of the free, I now dedicate my “spare” time to leading a grassroots educational group that I founded in 2015 called We the People of Northeast Florida. This group deliberately flies under the radar (by invitation only), so you won’t find us on the internet, yet we have hundreds of dedicated and passionate members. Every month we have amazing speakers on hot topics related to civics, elections, education, government, healthcare, etc. It’s a place where everyone is welcome to speak freely and is treated respectfully. We’d love to have you speak to We the People of Northeast Florida, Naomi, if you ever want a break from New York (perhaps in the cold months of winter?). There are many of us here who share your perspectives. Again, bless you for sharing your story.