The situation we're in reminds me of late stage communism. Not the Glorious Revolution, not Stalinism, but late stage communism, when almost no-one actually believed the story, no-one expected to ever see Workers' Paradise, and yet bureaucrats enforced conformity (because those were the orders, they were paid to do it, and it wasn't their job to actually evaluate any of it), and everyone else conformed because they couldn't see a feasible way out. Few people were jailed, and there were no (political) executions. But say a wrong thing, and you'd be out of a job. Very few people believed the story, and yet it continued for a couple more decades due to sheer inertia.
And I fear that this is what awaits us. Boosters every six months. No-one expects the virus to be eradicated, and no-one thinks it's all that dangerous, either, but hey, rules are rules. If you don't conform, then you're out of a job and maybe even given a short prison sentence. If you don't vaccinate your kids, then you lose custody. Nah. Better conform. After all, most people don't suffer particularly serious side effects. Sure, the stuff might shorten your life, but so would poverty. Eventually, the whole thing will collapse. It would be awfully nice if it collapsed this winter, but it's perfectly possible it'll take decades.
This is exactly right. I wake up every morning thinking about the DDR, but also in a hopeful way: How one day it just fell apart, because the obvious absurdities were too great. Our best hope, the thing we must try to do, is hasten that moment, by mocking them, isolating them intellectually, revealing them for the frauds that they are. Just always hitting them anew every day, no matter how impassive they seem, until the collapse.
Fauci and Walensky are now selling shot #1 and #3, while also announcing #4 is expected for release in March. Israel is already selling or getting ready to sell the original version as #4.
They have already reached levels of absurdity that their only defense is censorship and trying to criminalize criticism.
Mandated boosters will wake up too many frogs before the boil.
This is what it was created for. To substitute for the loss of the Euopean Ghettoes in the wake of the French revolution, as in the Ghettoes the ruling rabbis had it so much easier to control the Jewish populations subjected to them. As this loss was permanent, they created their world Ghetto, Israel.
I think the change will happen like the quote from Earnest Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The question is how close are we to the tipping point?
I've considered that possibility (gosh, can it happen already?!), but unsure where the tipping point will be. I DO notice a shift in thinking/expression by previous believers, now that it has been shown the vax doesn't stop infection, sickness or transmission, and now that boosters are being discussed. Perhaps like religion, people are ok with some rituals and playing along (in their respective cultures), but once it starts demanding your children, your lives and lifestyle beyond the benefits--you wake up. I dunno. We are two years into this nearly, and it still hasn't ended.
Unforetunately I think you have identified one possible tipping point. If children are seen to be harmed for no real benefit, I think that would do it.
It fell apart amidst a world that contained relatively free cultures like the US, Canada, Australia et al. Today they're all gone, save for a few holdout southern states. Florida and Texas aren't riding the world's rescue in the way the US et al rescued East Germans from Soviet communism.
liberal democracy isn’t everything. much of the world isn’t part of this system, and there are alternative regimes. i agree it’s not the same scenario, but there is still - there always is - an outside.
Where do 'Smart Cities' fit into your worldview on conspiracy. Because there are current efforts all around the world to introduce the infrastructure for these, which I prefer to call 'Surveillance Cities'.
I have been thinking that the study of Chinese history might be useful to understand changes that overcome a rigid bureaucratic state. (I am not a scholar of Chinese history.) As best I understand it, they are only changes from the outside.
The issue with the DDR is the USSR had to pay their bills. The cost of buffer states became too great and once funding was cut a nation against itself had to fall. That the place was absorbed for cheap labor and land was a saving grace for the soon to be starving populace
In short, corona mania has become a sort of culture that everyone just kind of accepts. Until some other force comes up against it, it'll continue under its own momentum. Why did the hippie look of the 70's come to be replaced by the preppy khakis and plaids of the 80's? The culture just moved on. Folks got tired of the former, and the latter appeared fresh and new.
Obviously a disease is a somewhat different matter, but the same forces will be operative. Yes, fear is a strong motivator, but this can last only so long. I'm from San Francisco and moved to Boston in 1995, now living in Mexico City. I'm 60 and got covid in July. A week's headache and a few days of fever from this "deadly" virus and that was it. I'm the only person my family in California knows personally who's had it.
As more and more folks have stories like mine (which are the VAST majority), folks, especially the young, will start to realize that this hysteria is just that: irrational hysteria. The weight of this is becoming all too ridiculous.
And it's obviously far divorced from Science. What actual data does anyone have on Omicron? Almost none. Yet politicians are lurching into motion to impose even more draconian measures based on pure fear and political expediency. People are beginning to wake up to this. They're also beginning to wake up to the fact that the definition of "fully vaccinated" is more than a mere two shots, and will change every 6 months. Fewer are willing to sign up to a vaccine subscription model than the two shots and done model.
I'm thinking this panic can't last more than another year. Covid fatigue is setting in, and I think it's setting in hard. Literally everyone is getting tired of this increasingly ridiculous drill.
Yes this is exactly it. Corona mania has transformed into some sort social etiquette into the culture. Being vaccinated - for many - is like wearing a suit at work. You are one of the normal people. And bureaucrats have always loved implementing pointless regulations, and now people have sadly given them mandate it implement really invasive stuff. And of course this culture will wear off eventually, but the politicians will be the last to know this.
I certainly hope you are correct, Kim. And congratulations on surviving the bug. So far I see little sign that the trends you describe are taking root. The paranoia and fear is escalating, as can be seen in places like Austria and Australia.
The precedent you cite is a hopeful one, but our species also has other much darker precedents when it comes to mass psychosis. I pray that yours is the scenario that prevails.
Totally agree, and I think the one bright hope is that under a federalist system (as long as we have it), we have states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, and to a degree Alabama and Indiana, that essentially are done with it all (or have been for a while). That will only further illustrate how ridiculous this all is, when (gasp) life has gone on without masks or vax's etc, and people still get married, children are born, old folks die, and random folks die in car wrecks or from Covid...but life goes on. Btw, notice the most resistant states (and regions within states) and people, culturally, are the Scots-Irish, per usual.
I live in New Hampshire where it's covid crazy in the southern areas infected by MA residents but go to the Lakes region a lot during the summer. It's easy to spot outsiders from MA or NY because they are wearing their face diapers. Locals not so much!
Anyway, I went to South Carolina for a 1 week golf trip the beginning of October and 100% forgot about covid. Almost zero masking anywhere anf bars and restaurants full. I think the freedom feeling happened mainly because of not seeing people in face diapers all day. Actually, the feeling was so nice I'm considering moving there if/when I lose my job due to the jab mandate.
Good points Ricky. Ironic though that both Scotland and Ireland have totally swallowed the covid propaganda while England remains *relatively* more rational. I suppose all the best Scots and Irish decamped for America while they had the chance :-)
I agree with your thrust personally but confess to being discouraged by what I see around. I live in small-town Veracruz where even in pueblitas in the coffee hill country with only 500 inhabitants it is common to see people walking outside with masks, or on their burros, or alone in their cars. Even the officials pushing these silly things used to point out that wearing them outside isn't necessary, let alone in the middle of nowhere with super-fresh mountain airs.
And I read that Mexico just passed a law to begin creating digital passports similar to the social credit score apps already being used by well over a billion people in India plus god knows how many more in China already.
This isn't about a disease. The disease is a real-world event but a pretext for political machinations on a world wide scale. Unfortunately most of us - because we are reasonable, decent people - cannot stomach this notion and so are waiting for it all to go away.
I pray every day that it will go away but suspect we are entering a period similar to what happened to Russia and that it will be several generations before the pendulum swings again.
That said, there is a great irony afoot: although the Great Reset we hear rumors off may end up ushering in a new 'techno-fascist' age as many fear, the fact is that we are long overdue for a Great Reset of sorts, indeed it is inevitable. Things cannot keep going on the way they were since too many facets of our world had overtaken our governance systems. Transntional cultural and commercial interchange happens now at the speed of the latest meme on Youtube. International trading laws supersede local or national jurisdictions as per UCC going back decades (indeed back to the Roman Empire where the code was first put into being).
Furthermore, in the developed West the gap between the believed representative republics or democracies or commonwealths etc. and the reality had widened to the point of being no longer maintainable. Simply put, corruption was far too endemic and our countries were no longer what we were telling ourselves and our children they were.
Note I say 'were.' Because the old normal is never coming back. There will indeed be a New Normal, but hopefully we don't all let the Technocrats dictate at the point of a needle what the new normal will be. Although right now it looks like that is what is going to happen. We may not be able to believe that a new totalitarian era is upon us, but neither could any of the Russians in 1915. They had the highest standard of living of any peoples in the West - including the peasants and serfs - and would have laughed at you if you had warned them that in a few short years one in three of them would be dead of forced starvation, limbs being severed, execution and exile. But they all would have been wrong.
Well, I don't disagree with you. But one of the joys of Mexico is that the government here is too incompetent to really be able to manage any kind of "social credit score" system. Heck, they can't even keep motorcycles from running red lights in CDMX, or get cars to give the right of way to pedestrians in crosswalks.
As for the mask thing, I'm a little puzzled by it. Education here is much worse than in the states, but the USA isn't exactly a shining star when it comes to science education either. I'm constantly telling folks that there's no covid transmission outside, at least under ordinary conditions. Also lots of folks put the masks on for show. It's not uncommon to go into a small store and everyone suddenly dons their mask. I usually just tell them it doesn't matter to me and that I've already had covid. Most then just take them off.
As for a Great Reset, there will be one when the U.S. government debt problem comes home to roost. That will be a society-changing event. But the timing is of course totally unknowable. It's been a long time in the making, and could well go on for many more years. Or it could be triggered by the now rapidly-rising USA inflation.
I’ll visit you in hospital. Actually I likely won’t. But I wish you luck. 295,000 people have died of COVID in Mexico. Almost 1 in ten with COVID have died in Mexico. A much more modest number have died from drinking and driving or killed others. Might as well decriminalize that while your at it.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Masking somehow would prevent this? Some other point?
Mexico does much more to prevent covid than the USA. Every store, restaurant, theater, etc, takes your temperature prior to entering. You must apply hand sanitizer and walk across a disinfectant mat too. Masks are required. If this stuff was so effective, then what you write wouldn't have happened, would it?
Mexico has had about the same per-capita death rate as the USA. And it shares one of the top co-morbidities, namely a big obesity and diabetes problem.
"295,000 people have died of COVID in Mexico." Should read:
"295,000 people have died with COVID in Mexico."
As with most other places, the vast majority of people who have died in Mexico have co-morbidities. Mexico City is quite dirty with bad air in many barrios. Many Mexicans drink 2 litres of Coca Cola a day, eat badly raised meat and so forth. It's a wonder more didn't die.
In any case, it's simply not true to say that so many died of Covid implying that without it they would still be alive. The vast majority of covid deaths have happened to people slated to die within the next year or two anyway.
Death rates are rising again with booster waves, but that's another story.
Yes, and due to the internet, the whole thing will likely collapse much faster than late stage communism. Yes, there's censorship and mainstream media is pretty one-dimensional, but it's far from airtight. You have Substack, you have podcasts, and even the Youtube AI is pointing me to a bunch of clips critical of vaccines these days.
The more nonsensical it is the easier it seems to pull over the eyes of the public... the lies so great they couldn’t possibly be believed to be lies? “They” wouldn’t do that to “us”? We desperately want to believe in a Daddy that is “good” and project “Him” onto an ideology rather than a person. So no one need ever be held accountable. Until it gets REALLY bad and we pin it on ONE and refuse to learn the collective lesson?
I don't think that the Second World collapsed because the absurdities were too great. They actually weren't. The absurdities of the First World are just as great - such as the various inherent flaws of democracy - and people don't necessarily mind.
There are multiple reasons why the Second World imploded, but absurdity is among the main ones.
Technology speeds things up, for sure. But it doesnt determine the direction. When I was at school in the late 80's and early 90's, before the Internet existed, we were taught leftist talking points. Technology just sped things up a great deal.
29,000 Canadians have died of COVID. That might play into the fear a little. One day your neighbour is alive and then she isn’t. And people say, yes she was 42, but probably going to die anyway. And that would be true I suppose if you had planned on killing her - but otherwise no. She would have pleasantly been and would be actually still alive. So that definitely concerns people.
In Poland the Communist Party had lost the people after they took on western loans in the mid 70s and were of course caught out on the repayments. A society of plenty became one of little within 7 years or so. And then you had General Jaruzelski martial law, the West (mainly the US) subsidizing dissent and the Solidarity Trade Union which mingled with all those forces.
The analogy with late-stage communism is wrong on many counts. In the totalitarianism (tyranny, for short) of yesteryear, the screws were loosening since the end was nigh; now, they are being continuously tightened since there is a new beginning in the offing. From relative freedom (liberal democracy, if one cares to be imprecise) the white world (usage intentional) is about to enter the age of tyranny never seen before, and enabled by the available and soon-to-materialize sci-fi technology. Bentham´s panopticon is the blueprint, writ large; that is why "lockdown" has come into its global own. The masses will be just that, and move in "lockstep" (Rockefeller Foundation, 2010). The Lockean paradigm has run its course since it could only be propped up by firmly held beliefs; morals, and personal integrity. Leviathan beckons, ready to pounce on the last remains of human spirit - clearly, this is not the end but a beginning. There will be the equivalent of Red Pioneers/Communist Youth cadres, and there will be many of them. I can see them rising and on the ready, looking forward to their Brave New World. Literally dehumanized, godless but WEF-happy. Once again, the good thing is on its hind legs while the horror is only shaping up. There is no waking up from the nightmare - on the contrary, we are wading in.
The one thing that is different about the US is the second amendment. Too many people have guns. The Nazis and the Communists took away the guns first. This would be very difficult in the US. This was the significance of the Rittenhouse verdict. The trial was to take away the moral right of self-defense. The jury thought otherwise. People understand what a big step this would be on a large scale, and have held back. But it is still there and both sides know this.
It still had a massive chilling effect on the ability to defend yourself. The other lesson despite his acquittal was that were he not a blemish-free model citizen, who acted impeccably, which is a really hard thing to do when a mob is trying to kill you, and if he didn't have millions of dollars in legal fees donated to him, he would be in jail for the rest of his life.
And they are still after him, trying to have him removed from the college he attends, civil suits and possible federal prosecution.
It was a win in some ways, but still a huge loss in many other ways that do not bode well for the future.
The horror (sounds like Holdomor) needs our permission to operate. And it does not have it. It would also need competence of its administrators which it also doesn't have.
I agree. I know so many who are furious at leadership. I'm sure those in power here in the US are now afraid of their subject citizens. Ammunition is in short supply because of 2 years of strong demand. Also, the allegiance of the police is NOT to the state.
Years ago, I was in Germany explaining the second amendment to German colleagues. "We are armed to protect ourselves from the government."
You may be right, but I refuse to accept it as a certainty and will continually work to undermine such a system. I trust that everyone who reads this substack and other similar sites will do the same. Cheers and Fight On Friends.
It's tough to maintain your sanity as, on the hand, I don't want to wish ill on other people but those same people are zealously celebrating any ill upon my "kind", demanding reprehensible policies from their government and almost certainly won't change their minds until the vaccines produce serious consequences that can't be ignored.
Simultaneously, I have people I care about who bought into the lies and got themselves vaccinated.
Biden is America's Chernenko. Let us hope we are as close to transformation and that it comes with a similarly low level of violence. There will be a price to be paid though.
I spent seven weeks in a former Soviet state once, and although people there said that the years preceding and after the breakup of the Soviet Union was a very difficult time, I recently told a couple of relatives that I would consider such a scenario an acceptably soft landing for the United States.
You are so right - and it's the "inertia", with so much weight behind it now in academia, that for reasonable people a university is a dangerous and foreign place. I cannot teach or even be a tutor now in a psychology department that has gone mad. The irony of it all.
You could also easily argue that the current situation is reminiscent of the installation of the bolshevik regimes (I wouldn't call them communist). The late stages of the bolshevik era was marked by the sentiments you're describing, but that's not the case now. Now, people who push the covidian narrative are genuine fanatics, akin to bolshevik who pushed Second World totalitarianism.
Like the bolshevik era, however, covidianisms-wokeism is used by opportunists who are and will be exploiting whatever it brings and offers.
Good points - I guess there's no absolute equivalent from the 20th Century, but we can, from all the examples of totalitarianism, revolutions and counter-revolutions, draw some fundamental truths about human nature, the desire to control and the propensity to be controlled. As a psychologist this is my next big project.
Right. One must resist the urge to look for historical parallels and make the assumption that things will develop the same way as in the past. You have to try to predict the future based on how things are likely to develop in light of the factors that exist today.
As to the propensity to control and be controlled, you're probably right.
Check out the HBO documentary on Chernobyl. I found it fascinating bec I saw it through the same lens you describe. EVERYONE knew what they were saying was BS, but they kept saying it anyway. A reactor meltdown is an extreme and specific case, but it's the same concept in EVERYTHING.
Avoiding the truth ... creates hell.
Truth returns, the worm turns, and the same cycle begins anew.
I'm not sure why you think you've angered anyone? Because you don't think this is a vast conspiracy?
It obviously isn't. I wish it was, at least then I could marvel at the sheer brilliance and organizational fortitude of the conspirators. No, I agree that its part of the corporate-academia-government bureaucracy thinking.
I used to come from that world. I was employed at an American corporate and essentially lived my professional life guided by Policies and Guidelines and whatever else they had rules for. Over time, this becomes a way of life, and a way of viewing life
When I became an entrepreneur, first I was jarred by how there were no guidelines, no rules. Just me. Then, as I became good at my job (I run a B2B company) I learned how to exploit those bureaucracies, game regulatory agencies, and capitalise on these organizational idiocies. It has gained me significant wealth, but turned me very cynical, and I am not optimistic about the next 5 years of covid life
What you are describing is absolutely and 100% reality. Its worse than a conspiracy unfortunately, because of its hopeless, vapid banality.
One thing I've noticed is that there becomes a set of "anti-Covid" orthodoxies which invoke a lot of anger when they're challenged or someone mentions an alternate view. It's human nature I guess. We need to avoid the same trap the Covid hysterics (and anyone dedicated to any point of view) fall into. We should remember we're not about fossilized theories but keeping open minds and revising our views based on data and facts.
I agree with open mindedness 100%...but in my experience data (while it's what it is) is fundamentally unreliable, depending upon how may hands it has gone through and who is funding it. And facts...well they're not supposed to change, are they? That said, I think that everything should be challenged all of the time...so...
Agreed, figuring out the truth is a process. Cumulative information that adds up to conclusions. Constantly learning, questioning, and challenging. I think it's important to keep an open and humble mind and be able to recognize and admit when we're wrong. I think what happens too often is we land on a conclusion and we begin to identify with it to the point that any challenge to it becomes a threat to ourselves - our intelligence, our wisdom, our identity itself. We have to be careful to avoid that and recognize that the truth is outside of us and doesn't belong to us - we only seek it out and recognize it. Don't be dogmatic but humble when forming and stating theories.
The data are never perfect. You can only aim for "fit for use". The worst thing you can have is biased data, and once a piece of data becomes an indicator, pressure to control the signal follows.
I suspect "this" refers to rejecting the alternate orthodoxy view that this is all a grand conspiracy run by (choose one: Illuminati, Bill Gates, Lizard People, George Soros, Priory of Sion, The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, Comet Pizza, etc).
it seems a little premature to reject the parts that all those things play in how this plays out. I have long said the world is run on paedophilia, and I continue to feel this true. I do however take seriously alternate views and add them to the equation. I certainly hearted this essay, and admit it's got a tremendous message of truth in it.
I like to be challenged continuously as Candis said above
i have no problems with disagreement or anything, it’s no fun to post to echo chambers anyway. i just find the anger that these specific disagreements provoke unusual and amusing.
???? They have behavioral scientists and trials testing public opinion all the time. How to best word things, how to best publicize things, denial, revision, acceptance. Literally templates and millennia of experience with toying public opinion to decide what ideology is most suited to rule the public, which is moral collectivism. Billions of doses don’t just get created in a few weeks of discovery of a genetic sequence of a purported virus, it takes preparation to scale up. Just like wars don’t just happen overnight, soldiers are strategically placed on the borders. If anyone studies the funding streams or “follow the money” you will realize it’s the same collective political class entrenched in NGOs to pharmaceuticals to military to media to educational to big tech world. Go look up any board of directors or regulators and they all cross pollinate in serving the same high level agencies and organizations. All one needs is funding and installing of people. Conformity is the norm, we are herd animals. I’m not sure why people keep thinking that owning trillions of dollars worth of wealth in the form of land, multinational supranational organizations and corporations is incapable of affecting the public. Your food supply, your ad agencies, your banks are all monopolized: it’s literally the same owners at the top. From the inter parliamentary union, to Chatham house, trilateral commission, council of foreign affairs, bilderberg group. If two teenagers in an online video game can conspire to successfully scam people by schemes involving spoofed events or false purchases, it’s hard to not comprehend the nature of corruption where no “investigation team” or studies are ever accepted into the truth and it’s always “I can’t answer that, xyz agency did it” just like 9/11. I find the incredulity in disbelief of human ability to plan things and execute with contingency plans quite sad. Considering one needs a certain modicum of intellect to preserve dynastic wealth and political power, leaving things to chance while acceptable is unlikely something anyone would do with sufficient wealth power and intellect. Sure the public response is variable but that doesn’t mean something can’t be within the parameters of the strategic objectives set out for any set of agendas. You don’t need to succeed right away. You can fail and try again, and that is what anyone with the scientific method does, inclusive of a/b testing the population with macroeconomic policies that are destructive.
Happens to a lot of people, even those with pretty pedestrian life experiences. My take on it is that human society is based on myths. In our pluralistic society those always prove to be false in some fundamental ways upon serious examination. You accept those myths when young, that's how humans work. When you learn they are false later in life the resulting state of mind we call "cynicism".
I have wondered about what the "solution" would be. Does it mean "regime change" where the regime is the post WWII techo-bureaucratic state? If so, how would this unfold? It seems to me that people trying to build parallel institutions are doing the most productive work.
this is exactly right. we need another thing to happen. containment is causing such massive disruption that I think there are good chances it will even spawn its own demise, in the form of a second, greater crisis. supply chain chaos is a candidate, waiting at the margins.
I have a front row seat to the supply chain crisis. I sit pretty far upstream and have visibility to primary and basic materials. Its really ugly, and 100% a self inflicted problem caused by ephemeral containment measures
No. Global supply chains are extremely resilient and adaptable but were never designed to handle a systemic introduction of obstacles like this, at every level. Covid containment has infected everything. Industry is not immune. I could write 20,000 words about this. And because supply chains are truly global, the bottlenecks can be anywhere on earth, if that makes sense. For example, China zero Covid policy means that docking container ships need to have their entire crews tested before they berth. If a case is detected, the boat is sent back offshore for 2 weeks or until it shows up with a new crew. Just think of the domino effects of this.
Consider also Australia for example. They were a fortress yet still are heavily reliant on exports of basic materials. Just imagine the nightmare flight and vessel crews have to endure every time they are in an Australian port.
As a v. healthy 68 y old, I expected another ~30 years, tempered of course by this declining world resource availability. But I'm content with a fairly simple life, as indeed we had in the 1950s/60s/70s in the UK.
Two sinister points which have surely been debunked by those familiar with the pharma industry ...
a) The 'conspiracy theory', maybe from Mike Yeadon, that the vials are numbered 1, 2 or 3. Karl Denninger dismissed it as implausible on today's knowledge but I doubt he's looked at 100 random vials.
Or was Pf. just calibrating the dose to see what gave the best ratio of immunity to side-effects? If the USA has a million MDs and more nurses, ~10,000 must be sympathetic enough to help a sceptic get hold of some empty vials.
b) The strange lack of non-GM jabs in Europe and N. America. I think India, China and Russia may have five non-GM products between them. Are governments/pharma desperate to genetically modify us? I assume it's the cheapness (= profit) that appeals, even the glamour?
Interesting comment, but I am not clear on one point. The solution from whose perspective? The bureaucracy or those trying to get out from under it? Are you suggesting something so big the bureaucracy would be seen to fail without any way of regaining face?
The best defense against an entrenched bureaucracy drunk on its own importance is clearly written legislation that leaves no doubt to as intentions, limitations, and application. Boundaries are then created and the rule making and regulations arising from such reflect the legislators' intentions and not the bureaucrats' dream of bettering society.
Constitutional law is only about two questions: 1) who has the power? and 2) what are the limits on that power? The rest is details. You must also have a judiciary that will have the confidence to be independent to enforce those limits.
Since the judiciary has no enforcement arm, its decisions must be scrupulously just. Too late for the modern judiciary, they are seen as hopelessly partisan.
I suppose I'm just recounting from history. Most societal cataclysms birthed these institutions, which typically in their first generation or two served their societies very well. By the 3rd and 4th, decay had well and truly set in and we are where we are.
I see what you are saying now. I hope we do not need something akin to WWII to move us to a better path. So many of our systemic problems are "own goals" from the governing elites. They must be seen to fail totally before ordinary people are open to something new. (Not unreaonably, because there is always a possibilty that the something new is worse.)
This is the post that converted me to a paid subscriber. There is so much wisdom about how academic and lefty organizations operate. As someone who worked in (American) academia for 20 years I can't tell you how true the following statement is: "Wokeness is also self-radicalising, in the way that many university-incubated ideologies turn out to be. Administrators or department chairs are constantly in danger of being outflanked on their left, and so they must adopt and endorse the most radical line to maintain their position"
Well said - and true from someone who has worked in the Australian academic setting as well. Not only admin and department heads, but all staff - admittedly I've been out of the system for a few years now, but I can only imagine it's much worse.
I too left academia a few years ago, almost 7 in fact. The writing was on the wall. My wife persisted in an 'academic support' role (ie pointless administrator) and lost her job there in the recent waves of redundancies. Meanwhile, this august institution has just hired a 'Senior Advisor (Gender affirmation)' at an obscenely high salary. The priorities are hilarious. Meanwhile colleagues a decade after achieving phd's were competing for 'new investigator' grants and labs getting defunded all over the place.
Shocking (or maybe not so shocking) - I shudder to think what sort of people are these places now churning out. My children are more pragmatic than academic and didn't go through the system, but I don't think you need an 'insider' to realise what a clown show academia has become (at least in the social sciences - I've done some work with departments in the hard sciences and they do seem to be more or less 'getting on with it' despite the social wokeness around them). Anyway, enjoy the freedom Mike of not being in that environment!
I appreciated the notion that one can never be woke enough which suggests an impossible end. If institutions collapse from the spiral it will be a good reawakening. The woke religion can't satisfy the human spirit, I think and hope.
I am near the sunset of a long American academic career. Thirty years ago when I was on faculty at a "Public Ivy" I recounted to a bright grad student that I saw the "politically correct" pathway the university had adopted has always turned out badly in history. She noted the difference this time is that we are now pursuing the correct policies rather than the wrong policies of the past. Not sure what she thinks today.
I am currently a senior faculty at a relatively large public university in Texas that has being going woke as fast as it can. Many of my students are not on board though. (Example, when I poll for support of 2nd amendment, it gets 85% support. When I poll for support of concealed carry on campus, it gets about 70% support) When our Governor (Abbott) dropped the mask mandate, the University immediately complied as much of our funding comes from the state. We have no vax mandate, but the University pushed hard for everyone to get a vax and to mask. We have been in face to face classrooms for about 10 weeks now (no social distancing), and masks are optional. I do not wear one. About 20-25% of my students wear a masks - the University still pushes for wearing masks.
We held an in person faculty meeting about 6 weeks ago, and while being the oldest, so presumably the most at risk, I was the only one that did not even take a mask. Most kept masked except when eating, and I noticed it was hard to have a conversation around a large table with those wearing masks as we can't use lip reading to fill in what is not audible, or is muffled by the mask. But it seems most faculty cannot apply their advanced math and stat skills to seeing how little risk they have.
The University publishes a Covid Dashboard. Over the last week, 7 cases have been reported (from a population of about 40,000). For the entire semester to date, less than 250. This is no doubt an underestimate, but if students want extensions on HW, or accommodation for missed exams they will need to report so there is an incentive to report (and I believe it is University Policy to report).
The University may try to backdoor a mask and vax program via the Federal contractor rules. Hopefully the recent court successes against OSHA mandates can also apply or be used as a template to stop that.
So, Abbott's no mask, no vax rules were enough to get our University closer to sanity and he is not pushing as hard as DeSantis. The woke stuff marches on . . .
The situation we're in reminds me of late stage communism. Not the Glorious Revolution, not Stalinism, but late stage communism, when almost no-one actually believed the story, no-one expected to ever see Workers' Paradise, and yet bureaucrats enforced conformity (because those were the orders, they were paid to do it, and it wasn't their job to actually evaluate any of it), and everyone else conformed because they couldn't see a feasible way out. Few people were jailed, and there were no (political) executions. But say a wrong thing, and you'd be out of a job. Very few people believed the story, and yet it continued for a couple more decades due to sheer inertia.
And I fear that this is what awaits us. Boosters every six months. No-one expects the virus to be eradicated, and no-one thinks it's all that dangerous, either, but hey, rules are rules. If you don't conform, then you're out of a job and maybe even given a short prison sentence. If you don't vaccinate your kids, then you lose custody. Nah. Better conform. After all, most people don't suffer particularly serious side effects. Sure, the stuff might shorten your life, but so would poverty. Eventually, the whole thing will collapse. It would be awfully nice if it collapsed this winter, but it's perfectly possible it'll take decades.
This is exactly right. I wake up every morning thinking about the DDR, but also in a hopeful way: How one day it just fell apart, because the obvious absurdities were too great. Our best hope, the thing we must try to do, is hasten that moment, by mocking them, isolating them intellectually, revealing them for the frauds that they are. Just always hitting them anew every day, no matter how impassive they seem, until the collapse.
Fauci and Walensky are now selling shot #1 and #3, while also announcing #4 is expected for release in March. Israel is already selling or getting ready to sell the original version as #4.
They have already reached levels of absurdity that their only defense is censorship and trying to criminalize criticism.
Mandated boosters will wake up too many frogs before the boil.
Israel has also locked itself down from all outsiders so in fact the whole country, rather than just Gaza, has become a prison camp.
This is what it was created for. To substitute for the loss of the Euopean Ghettoes in the wake of the French revolution, as in the Ghettoes the ruling rabbis had it so much easier to control the Jewish populations subjected to them. As this loss was permanent, they created their world Ghetto, Israel.
I don't know that history but it sounds about right.
I always thought Israelies were shrewd and smart. That might still be true but they clearly are not immune to irrational fears and mass psychosis.
I think the change will happen like the quote from Earnest Hemingway: “How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The question is how close are we to the tipping point?
This is exactly what Italian blogger and chemist Ugo Bardi says following Seneca - growth is slow but collapse is sudden.
Don’t tell that to the Roman Empire.
I've considered that possibility (gosh, can it happen already?!), but unsure where the tipping point will be. I DO notice a shift in thinking/expression by previous believers, now that it has been shown the vax doesn't stop infection, sickness or transmission, and now that boosters are being discussed. Perhaps like religion, people are ok with some rituals and playing along (in their respective cultures), but once it starts demanding your children, your lives and lifestyle beyond the benefits--you wake up. I dunno. We are two years into this nearly, and it still hasn't ended.
Unforetunately I think you have identified one possible tipping point. If children are seen to be harmed for no real benefit, I think that would do it.
"How one day it just fell apart"
It fell apart amidst a world that contained relatively free cultures like the US, Canada, Australia et al. Today they're all gone, save for a few holdout southern states. Florida and Texas aren't riding the world's rescue in the way the US et al rescued East Germans from Soviet communism.
Unless there's a new Reagan.
liberal democracy isn’t everything. much of the world isn’t part of this system, and there are alternative regimes. i agree it’s not the same scenario, but there is still - there always is - an outside.
Where do 'Smart Cities' fit into your worldview on conspiracy. Because there are current efforts all around the world to introduce the infrastructure for these, which I prefer to call 'Surveillance Cities'.
Like they'll know how many times you go to the toilet.
But it would all be OK if you owned your own data ;)
I have been thinking that the study of Chinese history might be useful to understand changes that overcome a rigid bureaucratic state. (I am not a scholar of Chinese history.) As best I understand it, they are only changes from the outside.
The issue with the DDR is the USSR had to pay their bills. The cost of buffer states became too great and once funding was cut a nation against itself had to fall. That the place was absorbed for cheap labor and land was a saving grace for the soon to be starving populace
In short, corona mania has become a sort of culture that everyone just kind of accepts. Until some other force comes up against it, it'll continue under its own momentum. Why did the hippie look of the 70's come to be replaced by the preppy khakis and plaids of the 80's? The culture just moved on. Folks got tired of the former, and the latter appeared fresh and new.
Obviously a disease is a somewhat different matter, but the same forces will be operative. Yes, fear is a strong motivator, but this can last only so long. I'm from San Francisco and moved to Boston in 1995, now living in Mexico City. I'm 60 and got covid in July. A week's headache and a few days of fever from this "deadly" virus and that was it. I'm the only person my family in California knows personally who's had it.
As more and more folks have stories like mine (which are the VAST majority), folks, especially the young, will start to realize that this hysteria is just that: irrational hysteria. The weight of this is becoming all too ridiculous.
And it's obviously far divorced from Science. What actual data does anyone have on Omicron? Almost none. Yet politicians are lurching into motion to impose even more draconian measures based on pure fear and political expediency. People are beginning to wake up to this. They're also beginning to wake up to the fact that the definition of "fully vaccinated" is more than a mere two shots, and will change every 6 months. Fewer are willing to sign up to a vaccine subscription model than the two shots and done model.
I'm thinking this panic can't last more than another year. Covid fatigue is setting in, and I think it's setting in hard. Literally everyone is getting tired of this increasingly ridiculous drill.
Cheers,
Kim G
Roma Sur, Mexico City
Yes this is exactly it. Corona mania has transformed into some sort social etiquette into the culture. Being vaccinated - for many - is like wearing a suit at work. You are one of the normal people. And bureaucrats have always loved implementing pointless regulations, and now people have sadly given them mandate it implement really invasive stuff. And of course this culture will wear off eventually, but the politicians will be the last to know this.
I certainly hope you are correct, Kim. And congratulations on surviving the bug. So far I see little sign that the trends you describe are taking root. The paranoia and fear is escalating, as can be seen in places like Austria and Australia.
The precedent you cite is a hopeful one, but our species also has other much darker precedents when it comes to mass psychosis. I pray that yours is the scenario that prevails.
Totally agree, and I think the one bright hope is that under a federalist system (as long as we have it), we have states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, and to a degree Alabama and Indiana, that essentially are done with it all (or have been for a while). That will only further illustrate how ridiculous this all is, when (gasp) life has gone on without masks or vax's etc, and people still get married, children are born, old folks die, and random folks die in car wrecks or from Covid...but life goes on. Btw, notice the most resistant states (and regions within states) and people, culturally, are the Scots-Irish, per usual.
I live in New Hampshire where it's covid crazy in the southern areas infected by MA residents but go to the Lakes region a lot during the summer. It's easy to spot outsiders from MA or NY because they are wearing their face diapers. Locals not so much!
Anyway, I went to South Carolina for a 1 week golf trip the beginning of October and 100% forgot about covid. Almost zero masking anywhere anf bars and restaurants full. I think the freedom feeling happened mainly because of not seeing people in face diapers all day. Actually, the feeling was so nice I'm considering moving there if/when I lose my job due to the jab mandate.
Good points Ricky. Ironic though that both Scotland and Ireland have totally swallowed the covid propaganda while England remains *relatively* more rational. I suppose all the best Scots and Irish decamped for America while they had the chance :-)
How interesting! But actual Scotland and Ireland have gone mad. What gives?
I agree with your thrust personally but confess to being discouraged by what I see around. I live in small-town Veracruz where even in pueblitas in the coffee hill country with only 500 inhabitants it is common to see people walking outside with masks, or on their burros, or alone in their cars. Even the officials pushing these silly things used to point out that wearing them outside isn't necessary, let alone in the middle of nowhere with super-fresh mountain airs.
And I read that Mexico just passed a law to begin creating digital passports similar to the social credit score apps already being used by well over a billion people in India plus god knows how many more in China already.
This isn't about a disease. The disease is a real-world event but a pretext for political machinations on a world wide scale. Unfortunately most of us - because we are reasonable, decent people - cannot stomach this notion and so are waiting for it all to go away.
I pray every day that it will go away but suspect we are entering a period similar to what happened to Russia and that it will be several generations before the pendulum swings again.
That said, there is a great irony afoot: although the Great Reset we hear rumors off may end up ushering in a new 'techno-fascist' age as many fear, the fact is that we are long overdue for a Great Reset of sorts, indeed it is inevitable. Things cannot keep going on the way they were since too many facets of our world had overtaken our governance systems. Transntional cultural and commercial interchange happens now at the speed of the latest meme on Youtube. International trading laws supersede local or national jurisdictions as per UCC going back decades (indeed back to the Roman Empire where the code was first put into being).
Furthermore, in the developed West the gap between the believed representative republics or democracies or commonwealths etc. and the reality had widened to the point of being no longer maintainable. Simply put, corruption was far too endemic and our countries were no longer what we were telling ourselves and our children they were.
Note I say 'were.' Because the old normal is never coming back. There will indeed be a New Normal, but hopefully we don't all let the Technocrats dictate at the point of a needle what the new normal will be. Although right now it looks like that is what is going to happen. We may not be able to believe that a new totalitarian era is upon us, but neither could any of the Russians in 1915. They had the highest standard of living of any peoples in the West - including the peasants and serfs - and would have laughed at you if you had warned them that in a few short years one in three of them would be dead of forced starvation, limbs being severed, execution and exile. But they all would have been wrong.
Well, I don't disagree with you. But one of the joys of Mexico is that the government here is too incompetent to really be able to manage any kind of "social credit score" system. Heck, they can't even keep motorcycles from running red lights in CDMX, or get cars to give the right of way to pedestrians in crosswalks.
As for the mask thing, I'm a little puzzled by it. Education here is much worse than in the states, but the USA isn't exactly a shining star when it comes to science education either. I'm constantly telling folks that there's no covid transmission outside, at least under ordinary conditions. Also lots of folks put the masks on for show. It's not uncommon to go into a small store and everyone suddenly dons their mask. I usually just tell them it doesn't matter to me and that I've already had covid. Most then just take them off.
As for a Great Reset, there will be one when the U.S. government debt problem comes home to roost. That will be a society-changing event. But the timing is of course totally unknowable. It's been a long time in the making, and could well go on for many more years. Or it could be triggered by the now rapidly-rising USA inflation.
Anyway, cheers and thanks for the chat!
*3 months.
Hi, Kim :)
I’ll visit you in hospital. Actually I likely won’t. But I wish you luck. 295,000 people have died of COVID in Mexico. Almost 1 in ten with COVID have died in Mexico. A much more modest number have died from drinking and driving or killed others. Might as well decriminalize that while your at it.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Masking somehow would prevent this? Some other point?
Mexico does much more to prevent covid than the USA. Every store, restaurant, theater, etc, takes your temperature prior to entering. You must apply hand sanitizer and walk across a disinfectant mat too. Masks are required. If this stuff was so effective, then what you write wouldn't have happened, would it?
Mexico has had about the same per-capita death rate as the USA. And it shares one of the top co-morbidities, namely a big obesity and diabetes problem.
"295,000 people have died of COVID in Mexico." Should read:
"295,000 people have died with COVID in Mexico."
As with most other places, the vast majority of people who have died in Mexico have co-morbidities. Mexico City is quite dirty with bad air in many barrios. Many Mexicans drink 2 litres of Coca Cola a day, eat badly raised meat and so forth. It's a wonder more didn't die.
In any case, it's simply not true to say that so many died of Covid implying that without it they would still be alive. The vast majority of covid deaths have happened to people slated to die within the next year or two anyway.
Death rates are rising again with booster waves, but that's another story.
Corona madness will stop when the people stop it.
Yes, and due to the internet, the whole thing will likely collapse much faster than late stage communism. Yes, there's censorship and mainstream media is pretty one-dimensional, but it's far from airtight. You have Substack, you have podcasts, and even the Youtube AI is pointing me to a bunch of clips critical of vaccines these days.
The more nonsensical it is the easier it seems to pull over the eyes of the public... the lies so great they couldn’t possibly be believed to be lies? “They” wouldn’t do that to “us”? We desperately want to believe in a Daddy that is “good” and project “Him” onto an ideology rather than a person. So no one need ever be held accountable. Until it gets REALLY bad and we pin it on ONE and refuse to learn the collective lesson?
I don't think that the Second World collapsed because the absurdities were too great. They actually weren't. The absurdities of the First World are just as great - such as the various inherent flaws of democracy - and people don't necessarily mind.
There are multiple reasons why the Second World imploded, but absurdity is among the main ones.
The question is: who will be our Günter Schabowski or Harald Jäger? :)
Technology speeds things up, for sure. But it doesnt determine the direction. When I was at school in the late 80's and early 90's, before the Internet existed, we were taught leftist talking points. Technology just sped things up a great deal.
29,000 Canadians have died of COVID. That might play into the fear a little. One day your neighbour is alive and then she isn’t. And people say, yes she was 42, but probably going to die anyway. And that would be true I suppose if you had planned on killing her - but otherwise no. She would have pleasantly been and would be actually still alive. So that definitely concerns people.
welcome to our Brigade 77 friends
In Poland the Communist Party had lost the people after they took on western loans in the mid 70s and were of course caught out on the repayments. A society of plenty became one of little within 7 years or so. And then you had General Jaruzelski martial law, the West (mainly the US) subsidizing dissent and the Solidarity Trade Union which mingled with all those forces.
I visited Poland in 1989 btw. Was 'interesting'.
The analogy with late-stage communism is wrong on many counts. In the totalitarianism (tyranny, for short) of yesteryear, the screws were loosening since the end was nigh; now, they are being continuously tightened since there is a new beginning in the offing. From relative freedom (liberal democracy, if one cares to be imprecise) the white world (usage intentional) is about to enter the age of tyranny never seen before, and enabled by the available and soon-to-materialize sci-fi technology. Bentham´s panopticon is the blueprint, writ large; that is why "lockdown" has come into its global own. The masses will be just that, and move in "lockstep" (Rockefeller Foundation, 2010). The Lockean paradigm has run its course since it could only be propped up by firmly held beliefs; morals, and personal integrity. Leviathan beckons, ready to pounce on the last remains of human spirit - clearly, this is not the end but a beginning. There will be the equivalent of Red Pioneers/Communist Youth cadres, and there will be many of them. I can see them rising and on the ready, looking forward to their Brave New World. Literally dehumanized, godless but WEF-happy. Once again, the good thing is on its hind legs while the horror is only shaping up. There is no waking up from the nightmare - on the contrary, we are wading in.
The one thing that is different about the US is the second amendment. Too many people have guns. The Nazis and the Communists took away the guns first. This would be very difficult in the US. This was the significance of the Rittenhouse verdict. The trial was to take away the moral right of self-defense. The jury thought otherwise. People understand what a big step this would be on a large scale, and have held back. But it is still there and both sides know this.
It still had a massive chilling effect on the ability to defend yourself. The other lesson despite his acquittal was that were he not a blemish-free model citizen, who acted impeccably, which is a really hard thing to do when a mob is trying to kill you, and if he didn't have millions of dollars in legal fees donated to him, he would be in jail for the rest of his life.
And they are still after him, trying to have him removed from the college he attends, civil suits and possible federal prosecution.
It was a win in some ways, but still a huge loss in many other ways that do not bode well for the future.
The horror (sounds like Holdomor) needs our permission to operate. And it does not have it. It would also need competence of its administrators which it also doesn't have.
I agree. I know so many who are furious at leadership. I'm sure those in power here in the US are now afraid of their subject citizens. Ammunition is in short supply because of 2 years of strong demand. Also, the allegiance of the police is NOT to the state.
Years ago, I was in Germany explaining the second amendment to German colleagues. "We are armed to protect ourselves from the government."
You may be right, but I refuse to accept it as a certainty and will continually work to undermine such a system. I trust that everyone who reads this substack and other similar sites will do the same. Cheers and Fight On Friends.
It's tough to maintain your sanity as, on the hand, I don't want to wish ill on other people but those same people are zealously celebrating any ill upon my "kind", demanding reprehensible policies from their government and almost certainly won't change their minds until the vaccines produce serious consequences that can't be ignored.
Simultaneously, I have people I care about who bought into the lies and got themselves vaccinated.
Biden is America's Chernenko. Let us hope we are as close to transformation and that it comes with a similarly low level of violence. There will be a price to be paid though.
I spent seven weeks in a former Soviet state once, and although people there said that the years preceding and after the breakup of the Soviet Union was a very difficult time, I recently told a couple of relatives that I would consider such a scenario an acceptably soft landing for the United States.
Boosters every 3 months now 😂 I’m not sure I can withstand decades.
You are so right - and it's the "inertia", with so much weight behind it now in academia, that for reasonable people a university is a dangerous and foreign place. I cannot teach or even be a tutor now in a psychology department that has gone mad. The irony of it all.
You could also easily argue that the current situation is reminiscent of the installation of the bolshevik regimes (I wouldn't call them communist). The late stages of the bolshevik era was marked by the sentiments you're describing, but that's not the case now. Now, people who push the covidian narrative are genuine fanatics, akin to bolshevik who pushed Second World totalitarianism.
Like the bolshevik era, however, covidianisms-wokeism is used by opportunists who are and will be exploiting whatever it brings and offers.
Good points - I guess there's no absolute equivalent from the 20th Century, but we can, from all the examples of totalitarianism, revolutions and counter-revolutions, draw some fundamental truths about human nature, the desire to control and the propensity to be controlled. As a psychologist this is my next big project.
Right. One must resist the urge to look for historical parallels and make the assumption that things will develop the same way as in the past. You have to try to predict the future based on how things are likely to develop in light of the factors that exist today.
As to the propensity to control and be controlled, you're probably right.
I'm putting a request in for this (northern) winter. Thanks.
Check out the HBO documentary on Chernobyl. I found it fascinating bec I saw it through the same lens you describe. EVERYONE knew what they were saying was BS, but they kept saying it anyway. A reactor meltdown is an extreme and specific case, but it's the same concept in EVERYTHING.
Avoiding the truth ... creates hell.
Truth returns, the worm turns, and the same cycle begins anew.
I was thinking similarly ...
If anyone is offended by this article --- who cares.
I'm not sure why you think you've angered anyone? Because you don't think this is a vast conspiracy?
It obviously isn't. I wish it was, at least then I could marvel at the sheer brilliance and organizational fortitude of the conspirators. No, I agree that its part of the corporate-academia-government bureaucracy thinking.
I used to come from that world. I was employed at an American corporate and essentially lived my professional life guided by Policies and Guidelines and whatever else they had rules for. Over time, this becomes a way of life, and a way of viewing life
When I became an entrepreneur, first I was jarred by how there were no guidelines, no rules. Just me. Then, as I became good at my job (I run a B2B company) I learned how to exploit those bureaucracies, game regulatory agencies, and capitalise on these organizational idiocies. It has gained me significant wealth, but turned me very cynical, and I am not optimistic about the next 5 years of covid life
What you are describing is absolutely and 100% reality. Its worse than a conspiracy unfortunately, because of its hopeless, vapid banality.
i got a series of angry emails, which I’ve learned is predictable when I say things like this.
One thing I've noticed is that there becomes a set of "anti-Covid" orthodoxies which invoke a lot of anger when they're challenged or someone mentions an alternate view. It's human nature I guess. We need to avoid the same trap the Covid hysterics (and anyone dedicated to any point of view) fall into. We should remember we're not about fossilized theories but keeping open minds and revising our views based on data and facts.
I agree with open mindedness 100%...but in my experience data (while it's what it is) is fundamentally unreliable, depending upon how may hands it has gone through and who is funding it. And facts...well they're not supposed to change, are they? That said, I think that everything should be challenged all of the time...so...
Agreed, figuring out the truth is a process. Cumulative information that adds up to conclusions. Constantly learning, questioning, and challenging. I think it's important to keep an open and humble mind and be able to recognize and admit when we're wrong. I think what happens too often is we land on a conclusion and we begin to identify with it to the point that any challenge to it becomes a threat to ourselves - our intelligence, our wisdom, our identity itself. We have to be careful to avoid that and recognize that the truth is outside of us and doesn't belong to us - we only seek it out and recognize it. Don't be dogmatic but humble when forming and stating theories.
So well said!! Thank you!
Preach it!
The data are never perfect. You can only aim for "fit for use". The worst thing you can have is biased data, and once a piece of data becomes an indicator, pressure to control the signal follows.
When you say "this", what do you mean? Expanding beyond Covid? Talking about conspiracies? Tackling Wokeness in general?
I suspect "this" refers to rejecting the alternate orthodoxy view that this is all a grand conspiracy run by (choose one: Illuminati, Bill Gates, Lizard People, George Soros, Priory of Sion, The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, Comet Pizza, etc).
yes, this is what i mean.
I can tell you for sure that (as eugyppius says) when dealing with bureaucracies you should never assume intent over incompetence.
it seems a little premature to reject the parts that all those things play in how this plays out. I have long said the world is run on paedophilia, and I continue to feel this true. I do however take seriously alternate views and add them to the equation. I certainly hearted this essay, and admit it's got a tremendous message of truth in it.
I like to be challenged continuously as Candis said above
i have no problems with disagreement or anything, it’s no fun to post to echo chambers anyway. i just find the anger that these specific disagreements provoke unusual and amusing.
get used to it I guess. It's either that or avoid the search for truth. I think I know which one you will aim for.
also anger is a useful emotion. It's gotten a bad rap lately, but I think it'll be making a comeback soon.
???? They have behavioral scientists and trials testing public opinion all the time. How to best word things, how to best publicize things, denial, revision, acceptance. Literally templates and millennia of experience with toying public opinion to decide what ideology is most suited to rule the public, which is moral collectivism. Billions of doses don’t just get created in a few weeks of discovery of a genetic sequence of a purported virus, it takes preparation to scale up. Just like wars don’t just happen overnight, soldiers are strategically placed on the borders. If anyone studies the funding streams or “follow the money” you will realize it’s the same collective political class entrenched in NGOs to pharmaceuticals to military to media to educational to big tech world. Go look up any board of directors or regulators and they all cross pollinate in serving the same high level agencies and organizations. All one needs is funding and installing of people. Conformity is the norm, we are herd animals. I’m not sure why people keep thinking that owning trillions of dollars worth of wealth in the form of land, multinational supranational organizations and corporations is incapable of affecting the public. Your food supply, your ad agencies, your banks are all monopolized: it’s literally the same owners at the top. From the inter parliamentary union, to Chatham house, trilateral commission, council of foreign affairs, bilderberg group. If two teenagers in an online video game can conspire to successfully scam people by schemes involving spoofed events or false purchases, it’s hard to not comprehend the nature of corruption where no “investigation team” or studies are ever accepted into the truth and it’s always “I can’t answer that, xyz agency did it” just like 9/11. I find the incredulity in disbelief of human ability to plan things and execute with contingency plans quite sad. Considering one needs a certain modicum of intellect to preserve dynastic wealth and political power, leaving things to chance while acceptable is unlikely something anyone would do with sufficient wealth power and intellect. Sure the public response is variable but that doesn’t mean something can’t be within the parameters of the strategic objectives set out for any set of agendas. You don’t need to succeed right away. You can fail and try again, and that is what anyone with the scientific method does, inclusive of a/b testing the population with macroeconomic policies that are destructive.
>turned me very cynical
Happens to a lot of people, even those with pretty pedestrian life experiences. My take on it is that human society is based on myths. In our pluralistic society those always prove to be false in some fundamental ways upon serious examination. You accept those myths when young, that's how humans work. When you learn they are false later in life the resulting state of mind we call "cynicism".
I find people from former USSR are the most clear eyed nowadays.
Iol
I have wondered about what the "solution" would be. Does it mean "regime change" where the regime is the post WWII techo-bureaucratic state? If so, how would this unfold? It seems to me that people trying to build parallel institutions are doing the most productive work.
No, not regime change. The solution is, oddly enough, a bigger crisis. Covid-19 wasn't big enough.
this is exactly right. we need another thing to happen. containment is causing such massive disruption that I think there are good chances it will even spawn its own demise, in the form of a second, greater crisis. supply chain chaos is a candidate, waiting at the margins.
I have a front row seat to the supply chain crisis. I sit pretty far upstream and have visibility to primary and basic materials. Its really ugly, and 100% a self inflicted problem caused by ephemeral containment measures
Do you think such a crisis was going to happen at some point and it just needed a trigger?
No. Global supply chains are extremely resilient and adaptable but were never designed to handle a systemic introduction of obstacles like this, at every level. Covid containment has infected everything. Industry is not immune. I could write 20,000 words about this. And because supply chains are truly global, the bottlenecks can be anywhere on earth, if that makes sense. For example, China zero Covid policy means that docking container ships need to have their entire crews tested before they berth. If a case is detected, the boat is sent back offshore for 2 weeks or until it shows up with a new crew. Just think of the domino effects of this.
Consider also Australia for example. They were a fortress yet still are heavily reliant on exports of basic materials. Just imagine the nightmare flight and vessel crews have to endure every time they are in an Australian port.
When every ill-conceived intervention breeds new problems, it can't be far off. Were approaching peak interventionism
On resource and energy crises see:
surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com
or
peakprosperity.com
and James Kunstler's blog.
As a v. healthy 68 y old, I expected another ~30 years, tempered of course by this declining world resource availability. But I'm content with a fairly simple life, as indeed we had in the 1950s/60s/70s in the UK.
Two sinister points which have surely been debunked by those familiar with the pharma industry ...
a) The 'conspiracy theory', maybe from Mike Yeadon, that the vials are numbered 1, 2 or 3. Karl Denninger dismissed it as implausible on today's knowledge but I doubt he's looked at 100 random vials.
Or was Pf. just calibrating the dose to see what gave the best ratio of immunity to side-effects? If the USA has a million MDs and more nurses, ~10,000 must be sympathetic enough to help a sceptic get hold of some empty vials.
b) The strange lack of non-GM jabs in Europe and N. America. I think India, China and Russia may have five non-GM products between them. Are governments/pharma desperate to genetically modify us? I assume it's the cheapness (= profit) that appeals, even the glamour?
Interesting comment, but I am not clear on one point. The solution from whose perspective? The bureaucracy or those trying to get out from under it? Are you suggesting something so big the bureaucracy would be seen to fail without any way of regaining face?
The best defense against an entrenched bureaucracy drunk on its own importance is clearly written legislation that leaves no doubt to as intentions, limitations, and application. Boundaries are then created and the rule making and regulations arising from such reflect the legislators' intentions and not the bureaucrats' dream of bettering society.
Constitutional law is only about two questions: 1) who has the power? and 2) what are the limits on that power? The rest is details. You must also have a judiciary that will have the confidence to be independent to enforce those limits.
Since the judiciary has no enforcement arm, its decisions must be scrupulously just. Too late for the modern judiciary, they are seen as hopelessly partisan.
I suppose I'm just recounting from history. Most societal cataclysms birthed these institutions, which typically in their first generation or two served their societies very well. By the 3rd and 4th, decay had well and truly set in and we are where we are.
I see what you are saying now. I hope we do not need something akin to WWII to move us to a better path. So many of our systemic problems are "own goals" from the governing elites. They must be seen to fail totally before ordinary people are open to something new. (Not unreaonably, because there is always a possibilty that the something new is worse.)
It is mass brainwashing, Nazi style.
This is the post that converted me to a paid subscriber. There is so much wisdom about how academic and lefty organizations operate. As someone who worked in (American) academia for 20 years I can't tell you how true the following statement is: "Wokeness is also self-radicalising, in the way that many university-incubated ideologies turn out to be. Administrators or department chairs are constantly in danger of being outflanked on their left, and so they must adopt and endorse the most radical line to maintain their position"
thanks so much for your support ChrisC
Well said - and true from someone who has worked in the Australian academic setting as well. Not only admin and department heads, but all staff - admittedly I've been out of the system for a few years now, but I can only imagine it's much worse.
I too left academia a few years ago, almost 7 in fact. The writing was on the wall. My wife persisted in an 'academic support' role (ie pointless administrator) and lost her job there in the recent waves of redundancies. Meanwhile, this august institution has just hired a 'Senior Advisor (Gender affirmation)' at an obscenely high salary. The priorities are hilarious. Meanwhile colleagues a decade after achieving phd's were competing for 'new investigator' grants and labs getting defunded all over the place.
Shocking (or maybe not so shocking) - I shudder to think what sort of people are these places now churning out. My children are more pragmatic than academic and didn't go through the system, but I don't think you need an 'insider' to realise what a clown show academia has become (at least in the social sciences - I've done some work with departments in the hard sciences and they do seem to be more or less 'getting on with it' despite the social wokeness around them). Anyway, enjoy the freedom Mike of not being in that environment!
I appreciated the notion that one can never be woke enough which suggests an impossible end. If institutions collapse from the spiral it will be a good reawakening. The woke religion can't satisfy the human spirit, I think and hope.
One of your best, please write more like this and continue to expand beyond Corona-centric material.
I am near the sunset of a long American academic career. Thirty years ago when I was on faculty at a "Public Ivy" I recounted to a bright grad student that I saw the "politically correct" pathway the university had adopted has always turned out badly in history. She noted the difference this time is that we are now pursuing the correct policies rather than the wrong policies of the past. Not sure what she thinks today.
I am currently a senior faculty at a relatively large public university in Texas that has being going woke as fast as it can. Many of my students are not on board though. (Example, when I poll for support of 2nd amendment, it gets 85% support. When I poll for support of concealed carry on campus, it gets about 70% support) When our Governor (Abbott) dropped the mask mandate, the University immediately complied as much of our funding comes from the state. We have no vax mandate, but the University pushed hard for everyone to get a vax and to mask. We have been in face to face classrooms for about 10 weeks now (no social distancing), and masks are optional. I do not wear one. About 20-25% of my students wear a masks - the University still pushes for wearing masks.
We held an in person faculty meeting about 6 weeks ago, and while being the oldest, so presumably the most at risk, I was the only one that did not even take a mask. Most kept masked except when eating, and I noticed it was hard to have a conversation around a large table with those wearing masks as we can't use lip reading to fill in what is not audible, or is muffled by the mask. But it seems most faculty cannot apply their advanced math and stat skills to seeing how little risk they have.
The University publishes a Covid Dashboard. Over the last week, 7 cases have been reported (from a population of about 40,000). For the entire semester to date, less than 250. This is no doubt an underestimate, but if students want extensions on HW, or accommodation for missed exams they will need to report so there is an incentive to report (and I believe it is University Policy to report).
The University may try to backdoor a mask and vax program via the Federal contractor rules. Hopefully the recent court successes against OSHA mandates can also apply or be used as a template to stop that.
So, Abbott's no mask, no vax rules were enough to get our University closer to sanity and he is not pushing as hard as DeSantis. The woke stuff marches on . . .
Loved hearing your experience at the Texas University. Thanks so much for sharing
I'm in Washington state - we still mostly teach from home and do all meetings by zoom.
Unvaxxed losers like me can't come on campus - only able to teach online (but I'm grateful they didn't fire me like many other faculty)