A Media Memoir of Faith, Fracture, and the Fight for Truth
Chapter 4: The Pandemic Divide
2020 didn’t announce itself with particular fanfare. We had just moved to the Texas Hill Country. All of it felt like a blessing from God, though we didn’t yet understand how much we’d need that blessing.
January and February still felt normal. I watched FOX Business less, and more YouTube with the growing constellation of independent creators I’d discovered over the previous few years.
Dave Rubin’s The Rubin Report on YouTube became my go-to for in-depth conversations, debates, and interviews of those thinkers I’d been watching the last few years. Rubin created Locals.com as competition against Patreon censorship. I joined and grew in The Rubin Report community before I knew how much I would need that community in the years ahead. Rumble gained traction as a free speech platform as others engaged in throttling, censorship, and even cancellation.
Then March hit. “Two weeks to stop the spread. Flatten the curve. Social Distancing. Mask Up.” The phrases that changed everything.
Lockdowns swept the country. Churches closed. Schools closed. Businesses closed. People bought toilet paper like it was gold. Anthony Fauci was given a microphone from President Trump and gave the American public suggested guidelines that shifted week to week, flipping more than my sandals ever did.
Trump delegated lockdown decisions to the governors, revealing 10th Amendment States Rights in a new light. Blue states locked down hard. Red states varied. Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina became safe havens for those leaving California, New York, and Illinois. The divide was evident.
And I needed a job. I picked up a part‑time merchandising McCormick spice vendor gig traveling between nine H‑E‑B grocery stores on both sides of I‑35 between San Antonio and South Austin. It wasn’t my career, but it was familiar work, stocking shelves, resetting displays, keeping products moving while the world froze.
Every store had the same intercom voice-of-god repeating the same social distancing script every so often. The same tone. The same prerecorded cadence. The same reminder that something was wrong with all of it. I knew from my Army medic days that wearing a mask for long stretches wasn’t healthy.
I had fallen back on “comfortable” and “familiar,” but the Holy Spirit, speaking somewhere between my mind, soul, and spirit, convicted my heart that I was going the wrong way. The longer I drove from store to store, the more my thoughts drifted back to the path God had prepared for me. So, I quit.
Then came May. The George Floyd protests swept the nation. Riots. Arson. Looting. “Mostly peaceful protests” became dumpster‑fire memes. Cities burned while lockdown orders still restricted church gatherings and small businesses. The contradictions were impossible to ignore. Independent creators covered what mainstream outlets wouldn’t. The divide wasn’t subtle anymore. It was unmistakable.
Kyle Rittenhouse became a household name at 17 years old after standing up to violent protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two attackers before turning himself in to police. The Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington turned into an ‘autonomous zone’ in June, as the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department boarded up its doors and retreated.
The “summer of love” was anything but. And everything that came next — the migrations, the censorship, the election, the unraveling — would belong to the next chapter.
Quinn's Next Step 