"The expats are some of the most self-righteous about it all, particularly the Americans, who wouldn’t recognize tyranny, and don’t."
Such an insightful point. Americans of the liberal variety, generally, have no concept of a government that might not be doing things for the right reasons. Well, let me correct myself, since we have a "liberal" President, everything he does must therefore be just and good. If we had a Republican President, of course he would be literally Hitler. It must be some kind of deep intellectual laziness to just "believe" the words said by people on your team, and reject the statements of the people on the other team without ever looking at reality. But then again, these same people have an ancient mystical belief in "words" as being more powerful than actions. Saving someone from drowning doesn't seem to be as important as the words shouted to him from the shore.
My guess is the American expats are the ivy league, hyper liberal, monied karens of our country. I feel the need to apologize for them. We are not all line them, and we normies suffer their idiocy too.
Well, Europe's loss is our gain. When this ends here in the US, may our remaining petty tyrant karens all decide to relocate to "civilized" Germany, France & Italy 😆
I reckon this is why the Covidian response is most strongly supported in liberal democracies. People there have less experience with tyranny (in living memory) and don't know where these things lead.
Opposition seems strongest in Eastern Europe, the Third World and among those Westerners who've spent a lot of time overseas. Red Americans seem to be the largest exception.
I lived in an authoritarian hellhole for two years - a nation consistently ranked among the ten most repressive regimes in the world - and this is worse. People in Australia don't believe me.
I agree. My spouse is an immigrant from Eastern Europe, 20 yrs ago, and has refused the jab and curses these fascists government a**holes daily. His mother and father have also run from the jabs, and are wondering why they came to America, which is supposedly "free" when Moscow is now more free than Los Angeles? Interestingly, my brother-in-law, who came to the US when he was just 10 years old (instead of 19), couldn't wait to get the shots so that he could "party and travel and go to concerts." He of course has no memory of the "old country." Life in America has been too easy. We've actually contemplated a few times, in a joking way, "wouldn't it be funny if Russian starts accepting medical refugees from America?"
I realize this is not in any way your fault, and that you're just using the word in a way it's usually used nowadays, but every time people use the word "liberal" to describe these people, I suffer a bout of cognitive dissonance. Isn't liberalism supposed to be about liberty??
I'm gonna shoot from the hip here and give my take on what progressivism is, but I'm just a dropout blue collar dope so you'll have to excuse my poor writing skills;
A lot of ancaps and people sympathetic to the old right (IE opponents of the New Deal) will refer to a period in American history (late 19th century and early 20th) as "the progressive era". This is a period where government regulatory bueaurcracies, subsidies, labor laws, price controls, tariffs, supply management, central banking (and a plethora of central planning and social engineering tools) - were in vogue among the elite.
It ended up turning a lot of industry into anti-competitive state sanctioned cartels (or just straight up "public utilities") and they subsequently became far more fradulent, monopolistic, exploitative and in general started to form codependent bonds with the government institutions that granted them their iron clad market shares and profits.
Their policies also built something of a permanent bureaucratic state, largely under the executive, that persisted in implementing long term agendas despite the legislature switching parties routinely. I think it was TR (an OG progressive) we have to blame for that. IIRC there was some campaign to "take partisan politics out of the administrative state". Sounds like they just made it harder to fire bureaucrats basically.
Whereas before a party would "clean house" and replace the old department heads with their own loyalists, now they had to create new departments with new positions to divy up among their people. Cue an ever-expanding managerial state that was much more capable of implementing long term (and largely destructive) social engineering projects.
You also saw attempts to use state power to force a sort of Puritan Protestant cultural hegemony on the American population by these same progressives, specifically targeting Catholic and liturgical Lutheran immigrant communities (Germans, Irish, Latinos, Italians, etc).
Progressives used things like public schools and a variety of social welfare programs that saught to seep cultural power away from voluntary associations in these communities (like their churches, taverns, community charities, local schools and so forth) and bring them under the auspices of central planners.
My understanding is that these progressives were driven by a dogma that the state had a divine duty to realize some kind of Puritan utopia. They thought that using government to invade the personal lives and smother the social power of these heretics was the way to do that.
It was also neutering their political (and I guess cultural?) opponents. For example: taverns were hotbeds of politics for these non-WASP communities, and Prohibition could be seen as having been a direct attack on their ability to congregate and hash out political action plans.
I've even read arguments that women's suffrage was (at least in part) motivated by the fact that Protestant aristocratic women were a lot more likely to actually go out and vote than immigrant working class Catholics who were much more traditional. The idea was that this would give the progressives a boost at the ballot box.
I wish I could remember the source but I remember reading some essays by anti-sufragette housewives and teachers of that era and for what it's worth these women were not meek, subservient or stupid - they seemed to see the expanding of the franchise as a cynical ploy to push political agendas that would lead to the debasement of their traditions and communities. A growing progressive government would attempt to raise the children in their stead (they were dead-on with that one haha), and that was appalling to them. It was powerful and challenging stuff, and really makes me respect those badass housewives. They saw what was coming and understood how insidious it was.
Just as a side rant: I think the housewives of that bygone era get short-shrifted big time by feminist narratives - they had way more influence on the culture and the world around them than they are ever given credit for. They were the ones upholding tradition - because they were the ones instilling them in the children. That counts for a LOT.
Anyways my point is modern progressives operate in much the same way, using similar tactics and with similar elitist zeal. They've scrapped the Protestant vision for a pious society (obviously) but replaced it with wokism (or Science-ism, Social Justice, climate alarmism, or whatever the trendy scam is), but they share a lot in common with their Puritan forebearers as far as being pathological central planners and historical determinists (I think I'm using that term correctly?).
I'm no scholar though, this is just a vague narrative I've gleaned from reading my favorite historians.
I strongly recommend reading Murray Rothbard's book "The Progressive Era". It really helps make sense of the current state of the world IMO.
Or 'authoritarian'. In the UK, the left and the right both have authoritarian and libertarian wings, although currently 90% of Labour party MPs seem to be authoritarians, not entirely surprising considering the views of the current Labour leader and some of his predecessors.
I think all UK political parties are divided between those with a deep concern for individual liberty and others with a great liking of 'strong government' or 'the greater good', meaning a lot of trampling on individual rights.
The UK (Conservative) government has launched a consultation on revising the Human Rights Act, which is a restatement of the European Convention on Human Rights. This I think is almost certainly an attempt to dismantle our human rights legislation and enable mandatory vaccination, among other evils.
Deadline for comments 8th March. So not much time left.
Looking up this subject further, the Nazis were in favour of the greater good trumping individual rights. Just like the direction of travel of the UK government. What a great precedent (NB sarcasm alert).
I now call them neo-corporatists. It seems to capture the paternalism and messed up incentives. I don't like all the WEF conspiracy theory stuff, but really, that is the closest thing to their ideology.
This is why we need a NewSA, be that with all current member states combined with a level of state government autonomy, or a new nation entirely. We need a place where these newly minted PhD know-it-alls, and those who share their totalitarian ideologies are vastly outnumbered and eventually move away. We need a place that will by law prohibit any aspect of the Great Reset, teaching our kids Critical Race Theory, or funding of universities with tax dollars that teach only one viewpoint in every department. We’re just getting started at NewSA. Come join us.
I think this idea is wonderful. I've maintained the same thing needs to happen to Canada - split it up - partly to dilute the power centers such as Toronto or Montreal but also to gather together like-minded people. The alternative is a continuation of this constant partisan internecine warfare that is destroying countries and Western civilization. Sometimes the only solution is to split up.
The US is a "young" country and over time, as people move to areas where they like the politics, the county will segregate itself more and more. It already makes less and less sense that CA and NY and IL are making all the decisions for the rest of the country. I expect, maybe in 100 years? the country will split up -- unless they find a way to give Iowa and Wyoming and Alabama as much "clout" as San Francisco...
I disagree, after what is now decades of conversations with my progressive friends and classmates (I used to be an old-school liberal, and pretty much moved to the center -- where I have stayed as most other people moved to the left or right). The progressive people I know and talk to really believe that the government they like is benign and would never do wrong. There is no voter fraud on the left, and no corruption, and health czars really do know best. They believe in experts, and they believe experts are entirely altruistic (at least when it comes to their expertise).
Whereas everyone from the center to the right tends to suspect government, including one's own candidates, I see an amazingly naive trust on the left. The further left they go, the more they seem to believe it, until you get to the fans of socialism: Socialists would NEVER do anything bad! They are all for the people, all the time!
People center and right tend to look at individuals, not groups, and so evaluate particular politicians, groups of politicians, and parties. Yes, that is an oversimplification. But I think it holds true. Anyway, I don't think the left needs reassurance. I think the left believes its vision of reality -- that experts can make what they want to happen come about by declaring that it is true, and are entirely altruistic -- and sees everyone else as preventing them from making their paradise real by stubbornly refusing to believe. If we won't say their reality is true, they will make us say nothing at all, and then it will BE true.
The leaders do not think this is true. But the average person seems to.
This is one of the most astute summaries I’ve ever read of American leftism. Groups over individuals and a shockingly naive (or else malignantly disingenuous) faith in experts’ competence and sincerity.
I see this behavior too -- but where do these naive beleifs come from? Is it innate from birth, or does it come from having kind and reliable parents, from leading a charmed life where you were never betrayed? It is a puzzle for me. It almost seem to be genetic, as it reappears throughout history. Perhaps related to anxiety "herd-seeking" behavior?
I don't think so. I had kind and reliable parents. I think it comes from being taught we live in an "expertocracy," and that we should always listen to experts because things are too difficult for anyone to know everything. Why anyone thinks an expert would never lie is beyond me, but I've noticed that many people distrust experts in their own fields, or at least question them, but assume all other experts 100% honest.
Maybe it is equal parts living in an "expertocracy" and a devaluation and in some instances an outright contempt for knowledge and skill that is gained by personal observation and experience. Such is seen as suspect if not verified by documents provided by experts.
The level of approval by experts is ever increasing. Jobs that could once be found after being graduated out of high school now require at least a certificate from a local college. Otherwise ,we are told, scary things will happen.
It is convenient how the expertocracy grows and profits from instilling these fears in the public.
Not believing your own eyes is part of an "expertocracy" mindset. Once you believe experts must run everything, you won't listen to anyone but someone with the right certifications -- even yourself!
Maybe we are. I took you to mean they are weak and don't actually believe it, where I mean they really believe it whether or not you think they are weak. What Americans call leftism (we need a new term-- it's NOT what they call leftism elsewhere) always turns to totalitarianism. What frightens me is how quickly it has happened and how many people embraced it. If you had told me five years ago that Americans would do what they've done over the past two years, I would not have believed it. We are still far less totalitarian about Covid than many European nations, despite what the correspondent from Turkey wrote above. But -- !!!
I've always worked in media, though only briefly in news, and the current news media truly shocks me. It's just SO BAD. And yet, people still rely on it-- even as the polls show people say the trust it less and less, they still seem to trust it most of the time. If you say the people in the news are wrong, they can't believe it. Who are you to say the anchors are wrong, or Dr. Fauci is wrong, or the CDC is wrong? Or even MIGHT be wrong? At all, ever, about anything?
I always attribute a lot of the Red State distrust and skepticism of Big Government to come from the relatively high rates of military enlistment in the red states. Nothing shows you that the "people in charge" are idiots like a few years killing the wrong people in the wrong place and then getting blamed for it when you were just following orders. Liberals for various reason don't join the military, so maybe the divide comes down to class -- poor people vs. upper and middle
Agreed, which is why I fight each of these ideas politely but firmly whenever the chance arises. I used to keep my mouth shut but no more. We all thought the insane zeitgeist and demands would go away, but it turns out we just have to drown out the insanity by continually telling the truth and not allowing these people to bend our will.
yes, there seems to be some sort of deep anxiety, maybe a lack of self-confidence in their own decision making? I know a fellow who goes to the doctor for every mild ailment and follows every suggestion because "even if it's wrong it won't be my fault." Such a foreign mindset to me.
I've noticed the same with my daughter in law who does the same with my grandchildren. I'm from an age where for the most part visits to the pediatrician (besides the scheduled ones) were reserved for "We could grill eggs on her forehead" and "Is that supposed to be that color?" symptoms. Certainly not for "She had a mild cough."
She needs an authority figure to tell her it'll be ok -- and also if people have access to "free" healthcare they like to use it, like it's a treat or something. In the "old days" (1950s?) of course, you had to pay just to talk to the doctor.
I agree that these people are dangerous - very dangerous. The last comment which pointed out that these academic fascists will be the technocrats of tomorrow chilled me to the bone. They are the Goebbels and Mengeles of tomorrow. Who knows where they will take America? I have a suspicion it will be to violent civil war.
I've read the whole report in shock and disbelief, especially sad for the city of my birth, Prague. My disbelief is augmented by the fact that I am one of of the few very lucky individuals - I live in Florida. Aside from the few masked morons here and there (many in N95 muzzles), there are zero signs of this not being 2019. No mandates, no restrictions, no passes, no limits. Bars, restaurants, clubs, theaters - all at or over capacity. So now the *only* question is: why does the world insist on insanity where Florida proves normalcy is perfectly possible?
Because for many who helped promote the lie going so far as shaming others for non-compliance, it's easier to keep the lie going than to admit you helped promote this really big lie.
Humans don't do well with admitting to being wrong; it takes someone of strong character who will openly admit when they were wrong about something. Most of us fear if we do this its makes up look "less", makes you think others will assume your wrong in the future. Add to that the guilt that one experiences when realizing you may have helped end someone's life earlier then it otherwise would have by shaming them into compliance (ie getting the experimental vaccine) and you have someone doubly hesitant to admit being wrong and so they continue to promote the lie and some will even lie to themselves to help ease their pain.
Additionally you have the Authoritarian supporters who are accustom to self-deception, maintaining multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously due to years of mental gymnastics practice. These are the Wests version of CCP members, the people who play ball either b/c they are weak minded or fearful.
Yes, you are correct. But when it comes to those supermarket shoppers, I believe it's either continuing fear or a signal of woke political allegiance - or both. Among the black working class strata where I live, I'm pretty sure it's fear
I am in Florida too. What alarms me is that even here there are far too many people who have an outright terror of normalcy. Cough, teachers' union" cough. You can be sure if not for our governor the blue portions of Florida would be lapping up mandates and passports.
I fully agree . I am at a loss to explain the amount of maskoids in state that had had no state-wide mandates for 18 months. Every time I'm at Walmart or Publix, I ask myself...are there really that many Democrats here? :)) I live in Polk County which is mostly R
Nevertheless, we can count our blessings (and we do) Compared to 90% of the world, we're in paradise here
My prediction is that freedom will continue to spread, but won't be evenly distributed for some time. There will be hardliner Covidian pockets likely for months or years while neighbouring countries are back to normal. Sadly I fear Germany may be among the stragglers.
I expect some Covid restrictions will be with us permanently, based on the precedent of War on Terror laws that now seem normal. In Asia/Pacific, I don't think travel will ever again be as easy as it was in 2019. Would not be suprised if vaxx, mask or testing measures persist into the 2030s, plus governments are now in the habit of closing borders completely over any little bug. Getting travel insurance to cover being stranded may become common in the region.
Expect? You mean that's how all the European countries 'removing all restrictions' means that you still need greenpass to travel! Also Philippines, Thailand announced the same.
An interesting country to watch is Thailand which has an array of insane, complicated, and frequently changing entry requirements. Tourism accounted for 25% of the economy pre-pandemic, and tourist numbers are down by 90% at the moment.
The government (military junta) has been stubborn about relaxing restrictions, and there is a growing anti-government movement in the country. I'm not sure how much longer their economy can hold out if the restrictions remain, unless China is funnelling money to them.
Further, I see it as two populations at 180 odds with each other: One part wishes to be left alone to live their lives and the other wishes to tell everyone how their lives should be lived. It has been mostly thus my entire life; the difference now is the latter group has the power and force of the government behind it. Still, as always, I will not budge.
Agreed. We’re an academically oriented family from the state of Massachusetts and feel like an island is a vast, blue illogical sea. The final submission from the PhD candidate from Indiana describing his fellow STEM students is invoking despair.
Indeed. Academic intelligence alone appears to offer no protection from mass formation psychosis. I did come across this article that US PhD’s are the most injection hesitant educational cohort.
Re: Indiana. Our state legislature has been busy outlawing vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and other fiats by health departments. Even in 2020, police didn't strictly enforce rules and citizens didn't strictly abide by them. Once the PhDs and graduate students get outside of what I'm guessing is Bloomington, they're going to find a lot of indifference or hostility to their meddling.
I think you're right. I also live in Indiana, in one of its few (purported) blue counties, a county that always ends up putting a Democrat in the U.S. House, very likely through fraud. It's a county known for corrupt government: numerous elected officials have gone to prison; a former sheriff is still incarcerated. Two small Democratic-run cities in the county seem to have a lot residents who are quite happy about Covid restrictions. (I have a sibling, a former Democratic elected official, who has had the vaccine and boosters but is still living in fear of Covid, including of associating with my husband and me because we're unvaccinated.) But most of the county is conservative and things have been back to normal here for many months. However, a surprising number of businesses still require masks of employees.
My own frustration is with the healthcare "community," which, like the university "community" is apparently living in a different universe. Every doctor's office , clinic, hospital has required mandatory vaccination of its employees, and all of those entities require masks of employees and patients, no exceptions. That's a serious difficulty for me, with asthma, and for all people with respiratory diseases. They know that, but allow no exemptions. I MUST visit a retinologist's office every six weeks, which isn't easy because their insistence on masks, even though none of their patients have any communicable illness. I am, however, putting off an elective MRI because of the mask issue.
Despite the actual science, the healthcare people continue to blindly follow CDC mandates as if they laws written in stone. I haven't heard of any serious push-back here against the healthcare injection mandates. I have a lab-tech friend who strongly believes vaccine mandates are wrong, but she's a big fan of the shots themselves, and is totally committed to what she thinks is their safety and efficacy. She seems totally unaware of what's really going on, here and across the world re: the vaccines.
Indiana's attorney general (along with about 15 other states) filed a lawsuit against the Medicare/Medicaid worker mandate and the state legislature is working on making employer mandates difficult and expensive.
I hope more people now realize how little the medical industry goes by science. As Dr. Mike Eades says, doctors aren't trained to think.
Your first paragraph gives the game away: “ There are, of course, the long-familiar patterns: Those in the countryside are vastly more relaxed about Corona than those in the cities. ”
Well, why do you think that is? Maybe because that Amish meme was spot on? “ why are you not affected by covid? Because we don’t have TV.”?
I personally believe it is because people in the countryside are more self sufficient and accustomed to assessing risk and making their own decisions. They clear their own snow, collect their own firewood, and in some cases grow their own food. They don’t have an all-providing nanny-state to give them these things. They are prepared to live (and die) on their own terms.
On the other hand, people in small towns (from my experience) feel isolated and protected from what they see as Big City Problems. Small town politicians are more likely to face the ire of their electorate, and so tread a bit more carefully. They are also less likely to be full time bureaucrats, but small business owners or teachers - more connected to the everyday person in the community.
Where I live, it's because local law enforcement in the bush require public support so they don't push too hard. I.e you have to wear a mask in the market, as poorly as you like, but in the back streets no one cares.
Here there are specific reasons: some officials are elected and the national police need local info to fight communist bandits, but I guess the global pattern is that country people all know each other so they have to play nice. The anonimity of big cities allows the brutality we saw in Melbourne, etc. Plus country people are less educated, thus less stupid.
I notice the absence of any reporting on conditions in Israel. I have a friend there who has been in constant contact for 20 years. He has gone mostly silent, and the few emails in response to my own uncharacteristically contain no mention of anything Covid or vaccine related. Or health related, whatsoever. I do wonder how he and his family are faring but will not ask directly, as it is clear it is a topic not to be broached.
I'm from Israel. Everything is absolutely, perfectly fine here.
(Joking)
In all seriousness, situation is similar to most of the European countries described in the post. The "green pass" mandate is going to be relaxed since tomorrow - no more vaccine mandates for restaurants and gyms. Some politicians want to keep it for longer, and there is a campaign to vaccinate children. In short, incompetence and confusion rule.
See Bad Cattitude on Substack today for some Isreal reporting. As we go forward and vaccine deaths start to become more and more common and impossible to hide or spin, the Replicants with a 3-5 year lifespan remaining go hunting, and Gates and Bourla offer huge cash prizes for the best Blade Runners.
I think I remember Bret Weinstein (or maybe someone else) who talked about how friends in Israel would comment as if everything was OK, in a similar manner to people in Australia although many friends and family members who receive these comments have mentioned that they don't sound like "themselves" in these emails.
I get that same feeling also. We've known each other long enough that I suspect he knows I am capable of reading between the (absent) lines and will mind my p's and q's. I do get the odd feeling that censorship there is heavy at this time, or at the very least, perceived to be. The change has been dramatic.
I am 70 years old. A member of this growing and diverse family. I can't believe how much I am learning about the history and cultures of other nations. (even my own). A substantial added blessing.
Rules that aren't enforced or are easy to circumvent are the way governments prevent outright revolt by the population. Ignoring the rules, daring to be caught, is the first stage of revolution. A sort of "passive aggressive" insurrection.
The primary reason, I think, that the Truckers in Canada are protesting is that the cross-border vaccine mandates between the US and Canada are strictly enforced by the respective Federal agencies. There are no exceptions, work-arounds, or alternatives. Hence, mass protests.
All of these stories illustrate how governments move so slowly that by the time the behemoth is turned around the iceberg has already been hit and the ship is sinking. Yet the Captain will still be yelling about getting the ship to face the other way. Ironically, it was the very mildness of Corona that led to governments having enough TIME to actually implement the stupidest of their ideas. And now they want to play with their new "toys" of containment. Imagine if the original virus was as contagious as Omicron -- it would have been over by summer of 2020, perhaps at a greater short-term cost but certainly at a lesser long term one.
The story out of Czechia is incredible. I wonder if there are similar underground "Free Spaces" movements in other places? (selfishly hoping someone in London can hook me up)
Yeah, isn't it? I live in Prague, and I had no idea. Mind you, I'm a foreigner and not terribly well connected. Also, I never patronized restaurants, theaters and such very much to begin with (partly due to introversion, partly due to lack of money, and partly due to an assortment of dietary restrictions). I just wanted to be left alone, and not have to worry about losing my job (and with it, my visa) over these stupid shots. Actually, I even have the stupid pass from my bout of COVID a few months ago. Heh. Never showed it to anyone. Never went anywhere where it might be required, you see. Will I ever bother going to a restaurant in Prague again? Eh. We'll see. I'm in no hurry to do so, I can tell you that. So disgusted am I by what's happened.
Rod Dreher's "Live Not By Lies" contains quite a few reports about (Christian) underground activities in Prague during communism. Maybe experience from the past still radiates out there.
I agree, it is a truly horrible mistake to use Facebook for anything important. Gofundme has proven themselves corrupt as well now. The good news is that people are becoming aware of alternative platforms, like Substack, Rumble, and givesendgo.com
What is the stated rationale of the vaccine passport? I mean, the "official" rationale? Is it still that the vaccinated do not spread the disease to each other? Or that it is only the unvaccinated who spread to the vaccinated? Or is it that the unvaccinated only spread it to each other if they are in a nightclub, but not if they are congregating in house party?
Unfortunately, I think the issue here is thinking that any of this has any semblance of rationale. I think the biggest issue I've seen is that the narrative has been constructed to such a degree to prevent anyone from essentially piecing 2 and 2 together. You see many people essentially arguing in favor of the narrative using parochial viewpoints, and when additional information is provided they don't have the proper sensemaking abilities to wrap their heads around all of the nonsense.
There are still plenty of people I know who think the only way to conclude that you're negative is to keep testing, that the vaccines are protecting people when Omicron has vastly changed the effectiveness of these vaccines, that vaccines help prevent spread, and that they need to still wear masks even though nearly everyone I know has gotten Omicron.
There are two official reasons given, depending on whom you ask.
By far the most common, after the powers that be were forced to admit that the vaxx does nothing to limit spread, is that the shot limits severity and therefore we need everyone to get jabbed so the untouchables don't clog up the hospitals (a rationale, you'll notice, that has no limiting principle whatsoever).
Sometimes you get a particularly tone deaf pol, like the comically hideous mayor of Chicago, that outright says that the measures are solely there to make life difficult for the unvaxxed in order to force them to comply.
Thank you for this. But this news depresses me. The descriptions are of a majority compliant world. Vaxx passports will not disappear. Pockets of freedom exist but the old normal is one forever.
I think eugyppius didn’t include very many Containment Light stories to highlight where it’s still quite bad, but I can tell you life is 100% normal in small town Kentucky and has been for some time. Was in Nashville recently and 80% not wearing masks at the mall, including employees. I’d argue this is most of the land mass of the US (normal) and COVID insanity is now just a progressive locality / authoritarian country problem.
People think it's receding. I don't ... not that much.
As I said above, check the government proposals to dismantle, sorry 'amend' our human rights laws, ideally send some blistering comments in before 8th Mar. Then check any new white paper on universal digital IDs, possibly in March or April.
The UK like most common law countries (and a few more countries I think) has never accepted ID cards. The government's thinking will be 'why let a good crisis go to waste'?
There will be other attempts. Probably something to do with global warming.
I pray that people will learn their lesson here and recognize that charlatan "experts" willing to shill for some pretty heinous agendas are a dime a dozen.
The climate alarmists have always scared me more than the covidians. Their roots run deeper.
Thanks to the reporters across the globe for this information.
Eugyppius, the presence of your "voice" in these reports shows the amount of rewriting, condensing, etc., that you undertook. We are indebted to you all.
Eugyppius you never disappoint. There is so much 'meat' in your posts/blogs. This one was fascinating, even reading about my own country of residence, Canada. These personal experiences of people on the ground are filled with rich detail. The stories are so important. I particularly enjoyed the description of the hotel in Ottawa that was absolutely buzzing, and how the security guard had simply given up trying to enforce the mask mandate due to the overwhelming non compliance. To me, that one, seemingly minor observation, spoke volumes.
"The expats are some of the most self-righteous about it all, particularly the Americans, who wouldn’t recognize tyranny, and don’t."
Such an insightful point. Americans of the liberal variety, generally, have no concept of a government that might not be doing things for the right reasons. Well, let me correct myself, since we have a "liberal" President, everything he does must therefore be just and good. If we had a Republican President, of course he would be literally Hitler. It must be some kind of deep intellectual laziness to just "believe" the words said by people on your team, and reject the statements of the people on the other team without ever looking at reality. But then again, these same people have an ancient mystical belief in "words" as being more powerful than actions. Saving someone from drowning doesn't seem to be as important as the words shouted to him from the shore.
As an American, I agree. This lack of awareness is very dangerous to my country.
What an insightful comment! Yes indeed! (...and I am American)
My guess is the American expats are the ivy league, hyper liberal, monied karens of our country. I feel the need to apologize for them. We are not all line them, and we normies suffer their idiocy too.
Well, Europe's loss is our gain. When this ends here in the US, may our remaining petty tyrant karens all decide to relocate to "civilized" Germany, France & Italy 😆
American Anglo Karens luuuuv "the continent." Paris in particular. Even you Brits are too uncivilized for them!
Yup. And Italy is "Under the Tuscan Sun".
I reckon this is why the Covidian response is most strongly supported in liberal democracies. People there have less experience with tyranny (in living memory) and don't know where these things lead.
Opposition seems strongest in Eastern Europe, the Third World and among those Westerners who've spent a lot of time overseas. Red Americans seem to be the largest exception.
I lived in an authoritarian hellhole for two years - a nation consistently ranked among the ten most repressive regimes in the world - and this is worse. People in Australia don't believe me.
I agree. My spouse is an immigrant from Eastern Europe, 20 yrs ago, and has refused the jab and curses these fascists government a**holes daily. His mother and father have also run from the jabs, and are wondering why they came to America, which is supposedly "free" when Moscow is now more free than Los Angeles? Interestingly, my brother-in-law, who came to the US when he was just 10 years old (instead of 19), couldn't wait to get the shots so that he could "party and travel and go to concerts." He of course has no memory of the "old country." Life in America has been too easy. We've actually contemplated a few times, in a joking way, "wouldn't it be funny if Russian starts accepting medical refugees from America?"
I realize this is not in any way your fault, and that you're just using the word in a way it's usually used nowadays, but every time people use the word "liberal" to describe these people, I suffer a bout of cognitive dissonance. Isn't liberalism supposed to be about liberty??
I now refer to them as Progressive and point out how illiberal the policies are at every available opportunity.
Yeah, except that I don't see much progress, either...
I'm gonna shoot from the hip here and give my take on what progressivism is, but I'm just a dropout blue collar dope so you'll have to excuse my poor writing skills;
A lot of ancaps and people sympathetic to the old right (IE opponents of the New Deal) will refer to a period in American history (late 19th century and early 20th) as "the progressive era". This is a period where government regulatory bueaurcracies, subsidies, labor laws, price controls, tariffs, supply management, central banking (and a plethora of central planning and social engineering tools) - were in vogue among the elite.
It ended up turning a lot of industry into anti-competitive state sanctioned cartels (or just straight up "public utilities") and they subsequently became far more fradulent, monopolistic, exploitative and in general started to form codependent bonds with the government institutions that granted them their iron clad market shares and profits.
Their policies also built something of a permanent bureaucratic state, largely under the executive, that persisted in implementing long term agendas despite the legislature switching parties routinely. I think it was TR (an OG progressive) we have to blame for that. IIRC there was some campaign to "take partisan politics out of the administrative state". Sounds like they just made it harder to fire bureaucrats basically.
Whereas before a party would "clean house" and replace the old department heads with their own loyalists, now they had to create new departments with new positions to divy up among their people. Cue an ever-expanding managerial state that was much more capable of implementing long term (and largely destructive) social engineering projects.
You also saw attempts to use state power to force a sort of Puritan Protestant cultural hegemony on the American population by these same progressives, specifically targeting Catholic and liturgical Lutheran immigrant communities (Germans, Irish, Latinos, Italians, etc).
Progressives used things like public schools and a variety of social welfare programs that saught to seep cultural power away from voluntary associations in these communities (like their churches, taverns, community charities, local schools and so forth) and bring them under the auspices of central planners.
My understanding is that these progressives were driven by a dogma that the state had a divine duty to realize some kind of Puritan utopia. They thought that using government to invade the personal lives and smother the social power of these heretics was the way to do that.
It was also neutering their political (and I guess cultural?) opponents. For example: taverns were hotbeds of politics for these non-WASP communities, and Prohibition could be seen as having been a direct attack on their ability to congregate and hash out political action plans.
I've even read arguments that women's suffrage was (at least in part) motivated by the fact that Protestant aristocratic women were a lot more likely to actually go out and vote than immigrant working class Catholics who were much more traditional. The idea was that this would give the progressives a boost at the ballot box.
I wish I could remember the source but I remember reading some essays by anti-sufragette housewives and teachers of that era and for what it's worth these women were not meek, subservient or stupid - they seemed to see the expanding of the franchise as a cynical ploy to push political agendas that would lead to the debasement of their traditions and communities. A growing progressive government would attempt to raise the children in their stead (they were dead-on with that one haha), and that was appalling to them. It was powerful and challenging stuff, and really makes me respect those badass housewives. They saw what was coming and understood how insidious it was.
Just as a side rant: I think the housewives of that bygone era get short-shrifted big time by feminist narratives - they had way more influence on the culture and the world around them than they are ever given credit for. They were the ones upholding tradition - because they were the ones instilling them in the children. That counts for a LOT.
Anyways my point is modern progressives operate in much the same way, using similar tactics and with similar elitist zeal. They've scrapped the Protestant vision for a pious society (obviously) but replaced it with wokism (or Science-ism, Social Justice, climate alarmism, or whatever the trendy scam is), but they share a lot in common with their Puritan forebearers as far as being pathological central planners and historical determinists (I think I'm using that term correctly?).
I'm no scholar though, this is just a vague narrative I've gleaned from reading my favorite historians.
I strongly recommend reading Murray Rothbard's book "The Progressive Era". It really helps make sense of the current state of the world IMO.
A much more accurate description would be "technocratic."
Or 'authoritarian'. In the UK, the left and the right both have authoritarian and libertarian wings, although currently 90% of Labour party MPs seem to be authoritarians, not entirely surprising considering the views of the current Labour leader and some of his predecessors.
I think all UK political parties are divided between those with a deep concern for individual liberty and others with a great liking of 'strong government' or 'the greater good', meaning a lot of trampling on individual rights.
The UK (Conservative) government has launched a consultation on revising the Human Rights Act, which is a restatement of the European Convention on Human Rights. This I think is almost certainly an attempt to dismantle our human rights legislation and enable mandatory vaccination, among other evils.
Deadline for comments 8th March. So not much time left.
Looking up this subject further, the Nazis were in favour of the greater good trumping individual rights. Just like the direction of travel of the UK government. What a great precedent (NB sarcasm alert).
I now call them neo-corporatists. It seems to capture the paternalism and messed up incentives. I don't like all the WEF conspiracy theory stuff, but really, that is the closest thing to their ideology.
This is why we need a NewSA, be that with all current member states combined with a level of state government autonomy, or a new nation entirely. We need a place where these newly minted PhD know-it-alls, and those who share their totalitarian ideologies are vastly outnumbered and eventually move away. We need a place that will by law prohibit any aspect of the Great Reset, teaching our kids Critical Race Theory, or funding of universities with tax dollars that teach only one viewpoint in every department. We’re just getting started at NewSA. Come join us.
I think this idea is wonderful. I've maintained the same thing needs to happen to Canada - split it up - partly to dilute the power centers such as Toronto or Montreal but also to gather together like-minded people. The alternative is a continuation of this constant partisan internecine warfare that is destroying countries and Western civilization. Sometimes the only solution is to split up.
The US is a "young" country and over time, as people move to areas where they like the politics, the county will segregate itself more and more. It already makes less and less sense that CA and NY and IL are making all the decisions for the rest of the country. I expect, maybe in 100 years? the country will split up -- unless they find a way to give Iowa and Wyoming and Alabama as much "clout" as San Francisco...
I disagree, after what is now decades of conversations with my progressive friends and classmates (I used to be an old-school liberal, and pretty much moved to the center -- where I have stayed as most other people moved to the left or right). The progressive people I know and talk to really believe that the government they like is benign and would never do wrong. There is no voter fraud on the left, and no corruption, and health czars really do know best. They believe in experts, and they believe experts are entirely altruistic (at least when it comes to their expertise).
Whereas everyone from the center to the right tends to suspect government, including one's own candidates, I see an amazingly naive trust on the left. The further left they go, the more they seem to believe it, until you get to the fans of socialism: Socialists would NEVER do anything bad! They are all for the people, all the time!
People center and right tend to look at individuals, not groups, and so evaluate particular politicians, groups of politicians, and parties. Yes, that is an oversimplification. But I think it holds true. Anyway, I don't think the left needs reassurance. I think the left believes its vision of reality -- that experts can make what they want to happen come about by declaring that it is true, and are entirely altruistic -- and sees everyone else as preventing them from making their paradise real by stubbornly refusing to believe. If we won't say their reality is true, they will make us say nothing at all, and then it will BE true.
The leaders do not think this is true. But the average person seems to.
This is one of the most astute summaries I’ve ever read of American leftism. Groups over individuals and a shockingly naive (or else malignantly disingenuous) faith in experts’ competence and sincerity.
I see this behavior too -- but where do these naive beleifs come from? Is it innate from birth, or does it come from having kind and reliable parents, from leading a charmed life where you were never betrayed? It is a puzzle for me. It almost seem to be genetic, as it reappears throughout history. Perhaps related to anxiety "herd-seeking" behavior?
I don't think so. I had kind and reliable parents. I think it comes from being taught we live in an "expertocracy," and that we should always listen to experts because things are too difficult for anyone to know everything. Why anyone thinks an expert would never lie is beyond me, but I've noticed that many people distrust experts in their own fields, or at least question them, but assume all other experts 100% honest.
Maybe it is equal parts living in an "expertocracy" and a devaluation and in some instances an outright contempt for knowledge and skill that is gained by personal observation and experience. Such is seen as suspect if not verified by documents provided by experts.
The level of approval by experts is ever increasing. Jobs that could once be found after being graduated out of high school now require at least a certificate from a local college. Otherwise ,we are told, scary things will happen.
It is convenient how the expertocracy grows and profits from instilling these fears in the public.
Not believing your own eyes is part of an "expertocracy" mindset. Once you believe experts must run everything, you won't listen to anyone but someone with the right certifications -- even yourself!
Maybe we are. I took you to mean they are weak and don't actually believe it, where I mean they really believe it whether or not you think they are weak. What Americans call leftism (we need a new term-- it's NOT what they call leftism elsewhere) always turns to totalitarianism. What frightens me is how quickly it has happened and how many people embraced it. If you had told me five years ago that Americans would do what they've done over the past two years, I would not have believed it. We are still far less totalitarian about Covid than many European nations, despite what the correspondent from Turkey wrote above. But -- !!!
I've always worked in media, though only briefly in news, and the current news media truly shocks me. It's just SO BAD. And yet, people still rely on it-- even as the polls show people say the trust it less and less, they still seem to trust it most of the time. If you say the people in the news are wrong, they can't believe it. Who are you to say the anchors are wrong, or Dr. Fauci is wrong, or the CDC is wrong? Or even MIGHT be wrong? At all, ever, about anything?
I always attribute a lot of the Red State distrust and skepticism of Big Government to come from the relatively high rates of military enlistment in the red states. Nothing shows you that the "people in charge" are idiots like a few years killing the wrong people in the wrong place and then getting blamed for it when you were just following orders. Liberals for various reason don't join the military, so maybe the divide comes down to class -- poor people vs. upper and middle
Nicely put.
Agreed, which is why I fight each of these ideas politely but firmly whenever the chance arises. I used to keep my mouth shut but no more. We all thought the insane zeitgeist and demands would go away, but it turns out we just have to drown out the insanity by continually telling the truth and not allowing these people to bend our will.
"Tell the truth and shame the devil."
yes, there seems to be some sort of deep anxiety, maybe a lack of self-confidence in their own decision making? I know a fellow who goes to the doctor for every mild ailment and follows every suggestion because "even if it's wrong it won't be my fault." Such a foreign mindset to me.
I've noticed the same with my daughter in law who does the same with my grandchildren. I'm from an age where for the most part visits to the pediatrician (besides the scheduled ones) were reserved for "We could grill eggs on her forehead" and "Is that supposed to be that color?" symptoms. Certainly not for "She had a mild cough."
She needs an authority figure to tell her it'll be ok -- and also if people have access to "free" healthcare they like to use it, like it's a treat or something. In the "old days" (1950s?) of course, you had to pay just to talk to the doctor.
The "free" healthcare is a big factor. In our early child rearing years it was all self pay. So we were rather tight fisted about doctor visits.
I agree that these people are dangerous - very dangerous. The last comment which pointed out that these academic fascists will be the technocrats of tomorrow chilled me to the bone. They are the Goebbels and Mengeles of tomorrow. Who knows where they will take America? I have a suspicion it will be to violent civil war.
I've read the whole report in shock and disbelief, especially sad for the city of my birth, Prague. My disbelief is augmented by the fact that I am one of of the few very lucky individuals - I live in Florida. Aside from the few masked morons here and there (many in N95 muzzles), there are zero signs of this not being 2019. No mandates, no restrictions, no passes, no limits. Bars, restaurants, clubs, theaters - all at or over capacity. So now the *only* question is: why does the world insist on insanity where Florida proves normalcy is perfectly possible?
Arizonian here, thankful for my free state, although we do have our share of fear mongers driving their cars alone with masks on. Their choice!
Because for many who helped promote the lie going so far as shaming others for non-compliance, it's easier to keep the lie going than to admit you helped promote this really big lie.
Humans don't do well with admitting to being wrong; it takes someone of strong character who will openly admit when they were wrong about something. Most of us fear if we do this its makes up look "less", makes you think others will assume your wrong in the future. Add to that the guilt that one experiences when realizing you may have helped end someone's life earlier then it otherwise would have by shaming them into compliance (ie getting the experimental vaccine) and you have someone doubly hesitant to admit being wrong and so they continue to promote the lie and some will even lie to themselves to help ease their pain.
Additionally you have the Authoritarian supporters who are accustom to self-deception, maintaining multiple contradicting ideas simultaneously due to years of mental gymnastics practice. These are the Wests version of CCP members, the people who play ball either b/c they are weak minded or fearful.
Yes, you are correct. But when it comes to those supermarket shoppers, I believe it's either continuing fear or a signal of woke political allegiance - or both. Among the black working class strata where I live, I'm pretty sure it's fear
I am in Florida too. What alarms me is that even here there are far too many people who have an outright terror of normalcy. Cough, teachers' union" cough. You can be sure if not for our governor the blue portions of Florida would be lapping up mandates and passports.
I fully agree . I am at a loss to explain the amount of maskoids in state that had had no state-wide mandates for 18 months. Every time I'm at Walmart or Publix, I ask myself...are there really that many Democrats here? :)) I live in Polk County which is mostly R
Nevertheless, we can count our blessings (and we do) Compared to 90% of the world, we're in paradise here
Some of this was hard to read. Some was hopeful. I'm more convinced than ever that the world is cleaving in two, the covid world and the free world
yes, very true. we wait to see whether the division lasts, or whether the ‘covid world’ is simply off-trend and will catch up.
My prediction is that freedom will continue to spread, but won't be evenly distributed for some time. There will be hardliner Covidian pockets likely for months or years while neighbouring countries are back to normal. Sadly I fear Germany may be among the stragglers.
I expect some Covid restrictions will be with us permanently, based on the precedent of War on Terror laws that now seem normal. In Asia/Pacific, I don't think travel will ever again be as easy as it was in 2019. Would not be suprised if vaxx, mask or testing measures persist into the 2030s, plus governments are now in the habit of closing borders completely over any little bug. Getting travel insurance to cover being stranded may become common in the region.
Expect? You mean that's how all the European countries 'removing all restrictions' means that you still need greenpass to travel! Also Philippines, Thailand announced the same.
An interesting country to watch is Thailand which has an array of insane, complicated, and frequently changing entry requirements. Tourism accounted for 25% of the economy pre-pandemic, and tourist numbers are down by 90% at the moment.
The government (military junta) has been stubborn about relaxing restrictions, and there is a growing anti-government movement in the country. I'm not sure how much longer their economy can hold out if the restrictions remain, unless China is funnelling money to them.
Let's not forget how generously they have been given platforms to do it in.
This echoes my own thoughts.
Further, I see it as two populations at 180 odds with each other: One part wishes to be left alone to live their lives and the other wishes to tell everyone how their lives should be lived. It has been mostly thus my entire life; the difference now is the latter group has the power and force of the government behind it. Still, as always, I will not budge.
Agreed. We’re an academically oriented family from the state of Massachusetts and feel like an island is a vast, blue illogical sea. The final submission from the PhD candidate from Indiana describing his fellow STEM students is invoking despair.
It is alarming to read how gleeful his fellow STEM students are for trampling freedoms. But personal liberty has no place in Utopia.
Indeed. Academic intelligence alone appears to offer no protection from mass formation psychosis. I did come across this article that US PhD’s are the most injection hesitant educational cohort.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/americans-with-phds-are-most-reluctant-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid/ar-AANjRHh?fbclid=IwAR0vws9s4RfkqtIbaonbUfasMfGrHw2fF68O76dt0cnk3T4Ap5vnx38SP44
Eugyppius, bringing the people of the world together. Thank you for your labours.
The 13th labour of Hercules!
Re: Indiana. Our state legislature has been busy outlawing vaccine mandates, vaccine passports and other fiats by health departments. Even in 2020, police didn't strictly enforce rules and citizens didn't strictly abide by them. Once the PhDs and graduate students get outside of what I'm guessing is Bloomington, they're going to find a lot of indifference or hostility to their meddling.
I think you're right. I also live in Indiana, in one of its few (purported) blue counties, a county that always ends up putting a Democrat in the U.S. House, very likely through fraud. It's a county known for corrupt government: numerous elected officials have gone to prison; a former sheriff is still incarcerated. Two small Democratic-run cities in the county seem to have a lot residents who are quite happy about Covid restrictions. (I have a sibling, a former Democratic elected official, who has had the vaccine and boosters but is still living in fear of Covid, including of associating with my husband and me because we're unvaccinated.) But most of the county is conservative and things have been back to normal here for many months. However, a surprising number of businesses still require masks of employees.
My own frustration is with the healthcare "community," which, like the university "community" is apparently living in a different universe. Every doctor's office , clinic, hospital has required mandatory vaccination of its employees, and all of those entities require masks of employees and patients, no exceptions. That's a serious difficulty for me, with asthma, and for all people with respiratory diseases. They know that, but allow no exemptions. I MUST visit a retinologist's office every six weeks, which isn't easy because their insistence on masks, even though none of their patients have any communicable illness. I am, however, putting off an elective MRI because of the mask issue.
Despite the actual science, the healthcare people continue to blindly follow CDC mandates as if they laws written in stone. I haven't heard of any serious push-back here against the healthcare injection mandates. I have a lab-tech friend who strongly believes vaccine mandates are wrong, but she's a big fan of the shots themselves, and is totally committed to what she thinks is their safety and efficacy. She seems totally unaware of what's really going on, here and across the world re: the vaccines.
Indiana's attorney general (along with about 15 other states) filed a lawsuit against the Medicare/Medicaid worker mandate and the state legislature is working on making employer mandates difficult and expensive.
I hope more people now realize how little the medical industry goes by science. As Dr. Mike Eades says, doctors aren't trained to think.
Your first paragraph gives the game away: “ There are, of course, the long-familiar patterns: Those in the countryside are vastly more relaxed about Corona than those in the cities. ”
Well, why do you think that is? Maybe because that Amish meme was spot on? “ why are you not affected by covid? Because we don’t have TV.”?
I personally believe it is because people in the countryside are more self sufficient and accustomed to assessing risk and making their own decisions. They clear their own snow, collect their own firewood, and in some cases grow their own food. They don’t have an all-providing nanny-state to give them these things. They are prepared to live (and die) on their own terms.
On the other hand, people in small towns (from my experience) feel isolated and protected from what they see as Big City Problems. Small town politicians are more likely to face the ire of their electorate, and so tread a bit more carefully. They are also less likely to be full time bureaucrats, but small business owners or teachers - more connected to the everyday person in the community.
Where I live, it's because local law enforcement in the bush require public support so they don't push too hard. I.e you have to wear a mask in the market, as poorly as you like, but in the back streets no one cares.
Here there are specific reasons: some officials are elected and the national police need local info to fight communist bandits, but I guess the global pattern is that country people all know each other so they have to play nice. The anonimity of big cities allows the brutality we saw in Melbourne, etc. Plus country people are less educated, thus less stupid.
I notice the absence of any reporting on conditions in Israel. I have a friend there who has been in constant contact for 20 years. He has gone mostly silent, and the few emails in response to my own uncharacteristically contain no mention of anything Covid or vaccine related. Or health related, whatsoever. I do wonder how he and his family are faring but will not ask directly, as it is clear it is a topic not to be broached.
I'm from Israel. Everything is absolutely, perfectly fine here.
(Joking)
In all seriousness, situation is similar to most of the European countries described in the post. The "green pass" mandate is going to be relaxed since tomorrow - no more vaccine mandates for restaurants and gyms. Some politicians want to keep it for longer, and there is a campaign to vaccinate children. In short, incompetence and confusion rule.
See Bad Cattitude on Substack today for some Isreal reporting. As we go forward and vaccine deaths start to become more and more common and impossible to hide or spin, the Replicants with a 3-5 year lifespan remaining go hunting, and Gates and Bourla offer huge cash prizes for the best Blade Runners.
That is really interesting.
I think I remember Bret Weinstein (or maybe someone else) who talked about how friends in Israel would comment as if everything was OK, in a similar manner to people in Australia although many friends and family members who receive these comments have mentioned that they don't sound like "themselves" in these emails.
I get that same feeling also. We've known each other long enough that I suspect he knows I am capable of reading between the (absent) lines and will mind my p's and q's. I do get the odd feeling that censorship there is heavy at this time, or at the very least, perceived to be. The change has been dramatic.
Your friend knows he is being monitored. Sorry.
I am 70 years old. A member of this growing and diverse family. I can't believe how much I am learning about the history and cultures of other nations. (even my own). A substantial added blessing.
Rules that aren't enforced or are easy to circumvent are the way governments prevent outright revolt by the population. Ignoring the rules, daring to be caught, is the first stage of revolution. A sort of "passive aggressive" insurrection.
The primary reason, I think, that the Truckers in Canada are protesting is that the cross-border vaccine mandates between the US and Canada are strictly enforced by the respective Federal agencies. There are no exceptions, work-arounds, or alternatives. Hence, mass protests.
All of these stories illustrate how governments move so slowly that by the time the behemoth is turned around the iceberg has already been hit and the ship is sinking. Yet the Captain will still be yelling about getting the ship to face the other way. Ironically, it was the very mildness of Corona that led to governments having enough TIME to actually implement the stupidest of their ideas. And now they want to play with their new "toys" of containment. Imagine if the original virus was as contagious as Omicron -- it would have been over by summer of 2020, perhaps at a greater short-term cost but certainly at a lesser long term one.
The story out of Czechia is incredible. I wonder if there are similar underground "Free Spaces" movements in other places? (selfishly hoping someone in London can hook me up)
Yeah, isn't it? I live in Prague, and I had no idea. Mind you, I'm a foreigner and not terribly well connected. Also, I never patronized restaurants, theaters and such very much to begin with (partly due to introversion, partly due to lack of money, and partly due to an assortment of dietary restrictions). I just wanted to be left alone, and not have to worry about losing my job (and with it, my visa) over these stupid shots. Actually, I even have the stupid pass from my bout of COVID a few months ago. Heh. Never showed it to anyone. Never went anywhere where it might be required, you see. Will I ever bother going to a restaurant in Prague again? Eh. We'll see. I'm in no hurry to do so, I can tell you that. So disgusted am I by what's happened.
If my memory serves, you aren’t missing much by not visiting restaurants in Prague
Dumplings and pretty good beer
agreed on the beer. can drink that at home though.
Rod Dreher's "Live Not By Lies" contains quite a few reports about (Christian) underground activities in Prague during communism. Maybe experience from the past still radiates out there.
Why yes, Canada is doing similar things now: https://rairfoundation.com/freedom-rising-canadians-create-counter-culture-for-unvaxxed-exclusive-interview/
Thank you this is brilliant. Sadly they're using Facebook to coordinate, which is quite the risk.
I agree, it is a truly horrible mistake to use Facebook for anything important. Gofundme has proven themselves corrupt as well now. The good news is that people are becoming aware of alternative platforms, like Substack, Rumble, and givesendgo.com
What is the stated rationale of the vaccine passport? I mean, the "official" rationale? Is it still that the vaccinated do not spread the disease to each other? Or that it is only the unvaccinated who spread to the vaccinated? Or is it that the unvaccinated only spread it to each other if they are in a nightclub, but not if they are congregating in house party?
None of the above. Only one rationale - you do what we tell you.
Step 1. of "you will own nothing and you will be happy." (Assuming you survive and or else implied.)
It's like S&M but there is no safe word.
As far as I can tell, the rationale is that it makes people get the shot.
Unfortunately, I think the issue here is thinking that any of this has any semblance of rationale. I think the biggest issue I've seen is that the narrative has been constructed to such a degree to prevent anyone from essentially piecing 2 and 2 together. You see many people essentially arguing in favor of the narrative using parochial viewpoints, and when additional information is provided they don't have the proper sensemaking abilities to wrap their heads around all of the nonsense.
There are still plenty of people I know who think the only way to conclude that you're negative is to keep testing, that the vaccines are protecting people when Omicron has vastly changed the effectiveness of these vaccines, that vaccines help prevent spread, and that they need to still wear masks even though nearly everyone I know has gotten Omicron.
There are two official reasons given, depending on whom you ask.
By far the most common, after the powers that be were forced to admit that the vaxx does nothing to limit spread, is that the shot limits severity and therefore we need everyone to get jabbed so the untouchables don't clog up the hospitals (a rationale, you'll notice, that has no limiting principle whatsoever).
Sometimes you get a particularly tone deaf pol, like the comically hideous mayor of Chicago, that outright says that the measures are solely there to make life difficult for the unvaxxed in order to force them to comply.
Sheesh! And all this time I thought it was racism! //
Thank you for this. But this news depresses me. The descriptions are of a majority compliant world. Vaxx passports will not disappear. Pockets of freedom exist but the old normal is one forever.
I think eugyppius didn’t include very many Containment Light stories to highlight where it’s still quite bad, but I can tell you life is 100% normal in small town Kentucky and has been for some time. Was in Nashville recently and 80% not wearing masks at the mall, including employees. I’d argue this is most of the land mass of the US (normal) and COVID insanity is now just a progressive locality / authoritarian country problem.
I hear you, and sometimes I believe it. But they didn't lose. I pray you are right.
People think it's receding. I don't ... not that much.
As I said above, check the government proposals to dismantle, sorry 'amend' our human rights laws, ideally send some blistering comments in before 8th Mar. Then check any new white paper on universal digital IDs, possibly in March or April.
The UK like most common law countries (and a few more countries I think) has never accepted ID cards. The government's thinking will be 'why let a good crisis go to waste'?
There will be other attempts. Probably something to do with global warming.
I pray that people will learn their lesson here and recognize that charlatan "experts" willing to shill for some pretty heinous agendas are a dime a dozen.
The climate alarmists have always scared me more than the covidians. Their roots run deeper.
Thank you for taking the time to do this. This will be so valuable to the future when they look back at this time. Hopefully this can be preserved.
Thanks to the reporters across the globe for this information.
Eugyppius, the presence of your "voice" in these reports shows the amount of rewriting, condensing, etc., that you undertook. We are indebted to you all.
Eugyppius you never disappoint. There is so much 'meat' in your posts/blogs. This one was fascinating, even reading about my own country of residence, Canada. These personal experiences of people on the ground are filled with rich detail. The stories are so important. I particularly enjoyed the description of the hotel in Ottawa that was absolutely buzzing, and how the security guard had simply given up trying to enforce the mask mandate due to the overwhelming non compliance. To me, that one, seemingly minor observation, spoke volumes.
Loved reading about Canada as most media is trying to keep it quiet here!
Maybe I'm a softie, but I got emotional reading that. Finally renewing my faith in our countrymen.