aristocratic imperatives

vampirism as a (none too subtle) allegory for societal domination

government has long been captive to the tendency to seek to create the very problems for which it then puts itself forward as the solution.

regulators break markets then claim “market failure,” hire more people, and regulate harder.

of late, throttling and shuttering businesses and then proffering paltry aid has been en vogue.

and now it comes full circle in the outright preferencing of the privileged to travel and work “if it will protect jobs” while continuing the wholesale job destruction of overzealous and infective covid policy for “the rest of you.”

no one is this outright stupid. it’s like using a dixie cup to put out a forest fire upon which you’re busily pouring kerosene.

this is not and was never about jobs. it’s about who is “special” and who is not.

“your career is a disease vector, but mine is important.”

anyone else getting the impression that the UK is trying to work up the nerve to outright re-establish the aristocracy?

Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 @Haggis_UK

The government have announced that senior executives can temporarily leave quarantine, in England, if they are undertaking activities with a significantly economic benefit. One rule for the elites, another for everyone else.

and they are far from alone. in the US, gavin “let then eat cakebread” (because i’m certainly not letting those proles into french laundry) newsom, nancy “salons for me but not for thee” pelosi whose need for TV ready hair far outweighs any risks, and andy “it’s not lying to the justice department if i do it” cuomo have been leading a similar charge.

over and over, those who would ask you to sacrifice and suffer and give up your rights have shown no inclination whatsoever to share such burdens.

lockdowns are for proles. our betters know better and when they run off to snog married co-workers or visit a mistress cross-town during the hard shelter in place lockdown they themselves demanded, well, don’t you worry your pretty little heads.

it’s clear they do not feel constrained by the strictures, rules, and mores they impose and demand of others. let’s face it: they never have. it’s just more obvious now and less effort is being made to hide it. and having made it so plain, perhaps they now seek to codify it.

let us not forget that privilege has always meant “private law.”

all we were ever really arguing about was whether it was de facto or de jure.

this aristocratic junta has had it in for the commoners all along. this is why they all speak endlessly of privilege. they accuse us of possessing it due to our skin tones and wealth or educations to get us to fight among ourselves. this dissent they so eagerly foment is the flourish of a stage magician to hide the mesmer of the hypnotist.

they would have you “check your privilege” so that you do not notice how wildly unchecked their own power has become.

they seek to hide their own staggeringly overt and increasingly legalistic entitlement and kleptocratic avarice and cronyism behind the rancid projection of their own amoral and self-aggrandizing actions upon us. they seek to invoke our conflict with and estrangement from one another to render us too busy fighting one another to notice the yoke of this rule being placed upon us and slowly tightened.

it is not a coincidence that the families of longstanding dynastic political power are such proud purveyors of political division and performative penitence.

apart from being world class crony-capitalism grifts, “social justice,” “climate justice,” and “public health” are the perfect squid ink to not only draw the eyes of the demos away from the vampire, but to entice them to invite it in.

if you can be made to feel bad about yourself and your prospects, you have been made ripe for indoctrination into mass movements. this is cultism 101.

the inculcation of original sin into every childhood and adolescence, adulthood and career path combined with prostration, submission, and self-abnegation the only absolution becomes not just a fundamentalist and evangelical secular religion but a funhouse mirror reflecting back a self-serving, dominating elite as though it were leading you to liberty and justice.

and you buy right in. if they do their job well, you’ll even thank them for it.

we have all heard the stories of how inviting a vampire in robs you of your power over it and leaves you at its mercy, but have you ever really thought about it?

myths that persist across the centuries do so because they capture some fundamental truth of humanity, human nature, and human process. they embody some form of the human condition or collective unconscious.

perhaps this enduring tale is an allegorical object lesson, a warning passed down through the ages about the hazards of inviting the powerful in without recognizing what they truly are.

perhaps it stands the test of time as a metaphor for the predations and justifications of an aristocracy that would not only make itself our masters but cultivate from us our gratitude for having done so.

fear he who would conquer you overtly, but fear far more those who would make you into your own jailer and convince you to do the oppressor’s work for them.

you would not be the first peasant tricked into waving little flags and shouting “huzzah” as duke came to take his things and conscript him into meaningless wars of vanity.

this is the moral of the tale of the vampire: the most inescapable of prisons are those we erect for ourselves and mistaking a foe for a friend is the beginning of the end.

of course, perhaps it’s something even more sinister…