I’d like to draw your attention to Jeffrey Tucker’s recent piece at Brownstone, on How They Convinced Trump to Lock Down. The problem he addresses is a chronological one. As late as 9 March 2020, Donald Trump was arguing vehemently to stay open, and
Mar 30, 2023·edited Mar 31, 2023Liked by eugyppius
Excellent essay.
Trump gave this man-made catastrophe oxygen by allowing the extension of the "15 days to slow the spread" for another 30 days. I'll admit he was in a trick-box. That said, a leader is supposed to recognize a trick-box, accept it, provide a solution and then make his case as to why the long term "COST" of this nonsense should be rejected.
He did not do that. I'm very disappointed that he did not rally the country around the only true solution there was: Let healthy Americans protect the vulnerable by being "brave" and "filtering" c19; that it was patriotic to take this head-on, rather then kicking the can down the road. To make his case that there was a "price" to be paid no matter what. But the price to hide from it would be orders of magnitude higher.
To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable (being a firewall) by taking on the risk of getting C19. That's what a leader does; make the tough decisions when you don't have all the information, when there are no "good" options and then communicate to the public the way forward.
In other words, to make an appeal to Americans that it was ultimately in every individuals and the countries interests, to rally around mitigating the unavoidable "pain" would require accepting the relatively low risk. To do otherwise would be cowardly and result in even more deaths of the vulnerable. This would have created peer pressure to be brave and for each individual to do their part in a common goal. Sort of like women in the World Wars giving white feathers to cowardly men.
The risk to the healthy was always negligible and he should have made that clear - we knew from the beginning that to be true. His lack of foresight led to the opposite type of peer pressure, which was a key feature in protracting this nightmare. And to recognize his reelection was at more risk if he allowed the country to be paralyzed by fear.
By failing to understand this he allowed the narrative to grow roots. This means, he may have to pay a price politically. He chose the "easy" way out by hoping this would self resolve or that the "vaccine" would magically end the "pandemic". A leader understands that being indecisive compounds the problem, confuses followers and always leads to poor outcomes. By following this strategy he allowed cowardness to become a virtue. He did not recognize that that was the "real" trickbox he (and the country) was in.
Around the same time, there was a Medium article circulating going against the lockdown drum beat, rationally talking about the Cruise ship data, the historical uselessness of lockdowns, and Corona's general status as a just really bad flu.
It went viral in right-wing circles through natural word-of-mouth, and Medium removed the article. Soon after, the "Hammer and Dance" made its splash.
Every day, I am more and more thankful Substack seems to have thrown hack platforms like Medium to the dustbin of the internet.
Sadly, a very high percentage of people feel a need to be told what to do. This is especially true with anything outside their daily routines. Mostly due to the secular nature of modern society where people have transitioned the innate sense of wanting to belong to something bigger (church, family, community) into a clinging of ideology like climate, race and gender. These huge populations no longer live in a real community of any type. Their lives revolve around social media (cultural cancer) and government. My opinion, this is going to get millions killed off in a bad way. Thanks in particular to the massive overtaking of societies by the UK and US thinking class of elites. Until then all we can do is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward Trump. He knows nothing beyond what his own instincts are telling him but he's got these "experts" screaming in his ear, almost every other country doing the same and a deeply ideologically hostile press ready to blame him for literally every single death.
As usual, he should have followed his own gut rather than the fucking awful people surrounding him, but I can understand why he didn't.
Seems to me there have been only 2 backbones throughout this whole charade - one in Sweden and one in Florida. The idea that world governments frantically scroll through Twitter and Friends to find out what to do next is so depressing. How stupid are these people?
Mar 30, 2023·edited Mar 30, 2023Liked by eugyppius
Europe had Pueyo. The States had people like Tufekci and Howard. Many of us--myself included--want to blame (useful idiot, evil, incentivized) policymakers like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Wallensky. For sure, they deserve both blame and derision. Just as much, evil companies like Pfizer and rich assholes with vaccine ROI to reap, like Gates, played much too prominent a role. However, there were also previous nobodies, folks working the TED Talk circuit and related, who exerted tremendous influence, not only with policymakers, but also with the rank-and-file. BOTH the hoi polloi and "our leaders" were listening to the same losers and taking steps that enriched the same assholes! And thus, here we are, three years into The Great Covid Dumpster Fire. Pfizer is still printing money. People are still voluntarily masking. Unrepentant influencers are asking for "amnesty" as if they deserve it. Policymakers have no way to back away from the edge without saying goodbye to the gravy train of public office they so richly do not deserve. I know it gets tiring to see me continue to use this hashtag, but it fits. #WeAreSoScrewed
I can see the merit in examining WHEN the lunacy began, but I'm more perplexed by analyzing when the lunacy SHOULD have fallen apart. That is, WHEN should more people have wised up.
I know when I began to question EVERYTHING: It was June 2020:
WHEN the weather in the northeast USA become delightful--and we were told to remain inside.
WHEN insane marauders rioted--UNMASKED--and we were told that was OK.
Then, a few months later, WHEN the "vaccines" were rolled out and pronounced "safe & effective." That was when my brother & I responded with, "How do they know? This stuff didn't exist 6 months ago!"
For me, I remain baffled by the failure of many people to question government policies and to submit to absurd edicts.
As for Trump--he was in a NO-WIN situation. I'm confident there was nothing he could have done to change the trajectory. Too much TDS and too much fear.
Writers like Eugyppius and Tucker are starting to get closer to answering the why and how questions of lockdowns, non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc. The "outbreak" in Italy was really the tipping point ... not what had happened in China until then.
The real - or main - cause of all the deaths in Italy also need more belated investigation. I suspect (like others) most were caused by iatrogenic and panic reasons ... instead of the virus suddenly infecting everyone in this region.
As Trump aims at returning to office, I wonder if he'll ever admit he got tricked. Many people who like him hate the vaccines, and Trump still swears by the vaccines.
I'm new as a Conspiracy Theorist but I do wonder about the example of a few heads of state that met their demise after resisting The Narrative(tm) . It might be that Boris Johnson and Trump were "persauded" to do as they were told ...or else.
You can't leave out of the analysis Trump's essential cowardice and desperate need to be liked and admired. Those swamped the essential businessman common sense of his first instincts.
He's a person who always doubts himself and will never risk the aloneness that a strong leader must be willing to experience until decisions are later proven correct.
But because it's taken until now to understand what caused so many of the early casualties--wrong treatment, no treatment, etc.--who would've been on his side as the hospitals kept murdering grandma? Even I can recognize he had no way of winning against all the forces from everywhere, fucking this thing up so badly.
Excellent essay.
Trump gave this man-made catastrophe oxygen by allowing the extension of the "15 days to slow the spread" for another 30 days. I'll admit he was in a trick-box. That said, a leader is supposed to recognize a trick-box, accept it, provide a solution and then make his case as to why the long term "COST" of this nonsense should be rejected.
He did not do that. I'm very disappointed that he did not rally the country around the only true solution there was: Let healthy Americans protect the vulnerable by being "brave" and "filtering" c19; that it was patriotic to take this head-on, rather then kicking the can down the road. To make his case that there was a "price" to be paid no matter what. But the price to hide from it would be orders of magnitude higher.
To make this point he would also have had to tell it like it is; that it is also patriotic for the "vulnerable" to stay at home until the healthy have done their job protecting the vulnerable (being a firewall) by taking on the risk of getting C19. That's what a leader does; make the tough decisions when you don't have all the information, when there are no "good" options and then communicate to the public the way forward.
In other words, to make an appeal to Americans that it was ultimately in every individuals and the countries interests, to rally around mitigating the unavoidable "pain" would require accepting the relatively low risk. To do otherwise would be cowardly and result in even more deaths of the vulnerable. This would have created peer pressure to be brave and for each individual to do their part in a common goal. Sort of like women in the World Wars giving white feathers to cowardly men.
The risk to the healthy was always negligible and he should have made that clear - we knew from the beginning that to be true. His lack of foresight led to the opposite type of peer pressure, which was a key feature in protracting this nightmare. And to recognize his reelection was at more risk if he allowed the country to be paralyzed by fear.
By failing to understand this he allowed the narrative to grow roots. This means, he may have to pay a price politically. He chose the "easy" way out by hoping this would self resolve or that the "vaccine" would magically end the "pandemic". A leader understands that being indecisive compounds the problem, confuses followers and always leads to poor outcomes. By following this strategy he allowed cowardness to become a virtue. He did not recognize that that was the "real" trickbox he (and the country) was in.
Around the same time, there was a Medium article circulating going against the lockdown drum beat, rationally talking about the Cruise ship data, the historical uselessness of lockdowns, and Corona's general status as a just really bad flu.
It went viral in right-wing circles through natural word-of-mouth, and Medium removed the article. Soon after, the "Hammer and Dance" made its splash.
Every day, I am more and more thankful Substack seems to have thrown hack platforms like Medium to the dustbin of the internet.
Sadly, a very high percentage of people feel a need to be told what to do. This is especially true with anything outside their daily routines. Mostly due to the secular nature of modern society where people have transitioned the innate sense of wanting to belong to something bigger (church, family, community) into a clinging of ideology like climate, race and gender. These huge populations no longer live in a real community of any type. Their lives revolve around social media (cultural cancer) and government. My opinion, this is going to get millions killed off in a bad way. Thanks in particular to the massive overtaking of societies by the UK and US thinking class of elites. Until then all we can do is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward Trump. He knows nothing beyond what his own instincts are telling him but he's got these "experts" screaming in his ear, almost every other country doing the same and a deeply ideologically hostile press ready to blame him for literally every single death.
As usual, he should have followed his own gut rather than the fucking awful people surrounding him, but I can understand why he didn't.
Seems to me there have been only 2 backbones throughout this whole charade - one in Sweden and one in Florida. The idea that world governments frantically scroll through Twitter and Friends to find out what to do next is so depressing. How stupid are these people?
Europe had Pueyo. The States had people like Tufekci and Howard. Many of us--myself included--want to blame (useful idiot, evil, incentivized) policymakers like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Wallensky. For sure, they deserve both blame and derision. Just as much, evil companies like Pfizer and rich assholes with vaccine ROI to reap, like Gates, played much too prominent a role. However, there were also previous nobodies, folks working the TED Talk circuit and related, who exerted tremendous influence, not only with policymakers, but also with the rank-and-file. BOTH the hoi polloi and "our leaders" were listening to the same losers and taking steps that enriched the same assholes! And thus, here we are, three years into The Great Covid Dumpster Fire. Pfizer is still printing money. People are still voluntarily masking. Unrepentant influencers are asking for "amnesty" as if they deserve it. Policymakers have no way to back away from the edge without saying goodbye to the gravy train of public office they so richly do not deserve. I know it gets tiring to see me continue to use this hashtag, but it fits. #WeAreSoScrewed
I can see the merit in examining WHEN the lunacy began, but I'm more perplexed by analyzing when the lunacy SHOULD have fallen apart. That is, WHEN should more people have wised up.
I know when I began to question EVERYTHING: It was June 2020:
WHEN the weather in the northeast USA become delightful--and we were told to remain inside.
WHEN insane marauders rioted--UNMASKED--and we were told that was OK.
Then, a few months later, WHEN the "vaccines" were rolled out and pronounced "safe & effective." That was when my brother & I responded with, "How do they know? This stuff didn't exist 6 months ago!"
For me, I remain baffled by the failure of many people to question government policies and to submit to absurd edicts.
As for Trump--he was in a NO-WIN situation. I'm confident there was nothing he could have done to change the trajectory. Too much TDS and too much fear.
I think that Scott Atlas nailed when he criticized Trump for doing whatever he thought would improve his chance of re-election.
Writers like Eugyppius and Tucker are starting to get closer to answering the why and how questions of lockdowns, non-pharmaceutical interventions, etc. The "outbreak" in Italy was really the tipping point ... not what had happened in China until then.
The real - or main - cause of all the deaths in Italy also need more belated investigation. I suspect (like others) most were caused by iatrogenic and panic reasons ... instead of the virus suddenly infecting everyone in this region.
As Trump aims at returning to office, I wonder if he'll ever admit he got tricked. Many people who like him hate the vaccines, and Trump still swears by the vaccines.
I'm new as a Conspiracy Theorist but I do wonder about the example of a few heads of state that met their demise after resisting The Narrative(tm) . It might be that Boris Johnson and Trump were "persauded" to do as they were told ...or else.
Something that doesn't seem to get much exposure is the fact that Trump got a million or more from Pfizer.
You can't leave out of the analysis Trump's essential cowardice and desperate need to be liked and admired. Those swamped the essential businessman common sense of his first instincts.
He's a person who always doubts himself and will never risk the aloneness that a strong leader must be willing to experience until decisions are later proven correct.
But because it's taken until now to understand what caused so many of the early casualties--wrong treatment, no treatment, etc.--who would've been on his side as the hospitals kept murdering grandma? Even I can recognize he had no way of winning against all the forces from everywhere, fucking this thing up so badly.
What about Trump got information, on that day, that it was a lab-made virus and the US DoD was responsible ?
Everything is so deeply fucking weird.
Wow, I never realized that article took off like it did. They had a team that even translated it into a bunch of different languages.