“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” —Justice William O. Douglas
I recommend everyone familiarize themselves with Étienne de La Boétie’s prescient 1552 work, “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude,” which I also quote in that piece:
“It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
de La Boétie offers the secret to escaping tyranny:
“You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
Chilling to read this. My grandfather's sisters lived in Vienna during the war. Even though they weren't Jewish enough to get carted away, their Jewish last name made them fear they were potential targets. To be on the safe side, they burned family documents that showed the Jewish lineage in case the authorities broke into their home and snooped around. The history is there to learn from. So sad to see how soon people forget.
Reading this, while living in SE US, watching jammed packed football stadiums, feels unworldly.
Am afraid until the youth of these countries start pushing back, to their family elders especially, and hard, this won't stop. The parents who are acquiescing to these drastic policies do not deserve respect from their children, whose future lives are being destroyed by the adults' cowardice.
I do not see a problem with children (and other family members) shunning those who are in support, either directly or through cowardice, of these policies. Remember, these people are willing to sacrifice you and their children, for their own selfish survival.
So turn the tables. Cut them off completely or at least limit what you are willing to talk about/do with them. Don't engage in casual conversations. Be polite but only just. Be prepared to walk away or hang up the phone.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about "stupidity" as Germans/Austrians stood silent during the rise of the Nazi party:
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.'
Pondering what state has a firewall. Is it Wyoming with its tiny population and vast spaces? Texas with its independent spirit? Florida with its smart and effective liberty minded governor? I’m picking one and going with it next year. Free my children first from Newscum and Commiefornia.
there is just no way any remotely informed health agency could come up with this “solution.”
Probably the most critical sentence. Are the actions of so many of the world's governments consistent with the hypothesis that they are acting rationally in response to the evidence or in the interests of health? Right from the very start it was known this was not a super-duper deadly virus. Serious maybe. Serious in the same ballpark as flu. Not even close to the severity of something like Ebola.
Yet here in the UK we've essentially trashed our economy, restricted freedoms, locked down, masked, sanitized, injected ourselves in an almost religious frenzy, closed businesses, closed schools, messed up our kids mental health AND their education, delayed vital treatments and diagnoses consigning thousands to long-term suffering and even death, turned ourselves into hypochondriacs frightened of the merest sniffle . . . and for what?
We're not appreciably better off now than we were a year ago, and I would suggest even worse. Yet here we are, facing more restrictions and lockdowns - the very things, along with the vaccines, that have been such a stunning "success" for us.
At least we haven't gone as far as Austria seem to want to . . . . . . . yet.
Does any of this seem reasonable as a response to a disease that might be about twice as bad as a severe flu in terms of overall mortality? Do vaccines passports make any sense whatsoever in terms of public health? Do we imagine our leaders to be quite so stupid and inept not to see what is so obvious to anyone taking an honest look at the data?
The question has to be why. The scale of the deceit, deception and duplicity have been quite remarkable - not to mention the extraordinary propaganda and suppression of information. Does any of this measure up to the actual threat level posed by this double-flu?
We've acted, or rather been continuously driven to act, as if we were facing an Ebola-level threat. A lot of people seem to still be terrified, the spectre of covid is the thing that seems to consume them, being the only thing they can focus on. Why have we been driven to this point?
One thing you can bet your house on. It's not about health.
i've been thoroughly disgusted with the general publics compliant response to the government abuse since this whole "pandemic" began. however, as pessimistic as i've grown over the past 18 months, i truly believe there will be a point that those in 'power' go too far, and the real american spirit is finally unleashed. *this* will be the country that eventually ends this shit. it will probably be a bit ugly, but we didn't start it, so i won't apologize.
Americans just went through totally fraudulent elections but half of people were cheering and the other half are sitting on their asses, doing nothing. Maybe useless flag waving with new slogans, new social media memes, parades and weekend barbecues. Oh yeah, that will show those fuckers in DC! Any minute now they will surrender!
Australia, Canada and New Zealand are really fucking losing it, despite being solid western democracies for hundreds of years.
In other words, a tyrannical takeover can happen anywhere and there is no special magical sauce against it. Your americanism, australialism or whatever-ism will not protect you from it. All you can do is fight against it but the end results are not guaranteed. Just look at North Korea. 80 years of hard pain for the populace and no end in sight.
Indeed, don't get a cat pissed off at you...next thing gifts left on beds and outside the box if you know what I mean. Too bad we can't arm cats, they have more bravado than anyone I know. They would get the job done with a whoop-assing so bad the other side would never have seen it coming.
Following on the the Karens piece earlier, perhaps people have no need for freedom. They had that and didn't like it because it created the expectation that they do something with it.
Perhaps they should look at vaccination status for ICU admissions, and if the majority are vaccinated, then house-arrest the vaccinated instead of the unvaccinated.
Of course this is insane, unless your goal is to increase vaccination rates at all costs.
We are in the twilight described in the quote I opened “COVID IS OVER! … If You Want It” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/covid-is-over-if-you-want-it) with:
“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” —Justice William O. Douglas
I recommend everyone familiarize themselves with Étienne de La Boétie’s prescient 1552 work, “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude,” which I also quote in that piece:
“It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
de La Boétie offers the secret to escaping tyranny:
“You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
Chilling to read this. My grandfather's sisters lived in Vienna during the war. Even though they weren't Jewish enough to get carted away, their Jewish last name made them fear they were potential targets. To be on the safe side, they burned family documents that showed the Jewish lineage in case the authorities broke into their home and snooped around. The history is there to learn from. So sad to see how soon people forget.
Reading this, while living in SE US, watching jammed packed football stadiums, feels unworldly.
Am afraid until the youth of these countries start pushing back, to their family elders especially, and hard, this won't stop. The parents who are acquiescing to these drastic policies do not deserve respect from their children, whose future lives are being destroyed by the adults' cowardice.
I do not see a problem with children (and other family members) shunning those who are in support, either directly or through cowardice, of these policies. Remember, these people are willing to sacrifice you and their children, for their own selfish survival.
So turn the tables. Cut them off completely or at least limit what you are willing to talk about/do with them. Don't engage in casual conversations. Be polite but only just. Be prepared to walk away or hang up the phone.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about "stupidity" as Germans/Austrians stood silent during the rise of the Nazi party:
‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.'
(Full essay: https://in-sights.ca/2021/09/18/bonhoeffer-on-stupidity/)
Pondering what state has a firewall. Is it Wyoming with its tiny population and vast spaces? Texas with its independent spirit? Florida with its smart and effective liberty minded governor? I’m picking one and going with it next year. Free my children first from Newscum and Commiefornia.
there is just no way any remotely informed health agency could come up with this “solution.”
Probably the most critical sentence. Are the actions of so many of the world's governments consistent with the hypothesis that they are acting rationally in response to the evidence or in the interests of health? Right from the very start it was known this was not a super-duper deadly virus. Serious maybe. Serious in the same ballpark as flu. Not even close to the severity of something like Ebola.
Yet here in the UK we've essentially trashed our economy, restricted freedoms, locked down, masked, sanitized, injected ourselves in an almost religious frenzy, closed businesses, closed schools, messed up our kids mental health AND their education, delayed vital treatments and diagnoses consigning thousands to long-term suffering and even death, turned ourselves into hypochondriacs frightened of the merest sniffle . . . and for what?
We're not appreciably better off now than we were a year ago, and I would suggest even worse. Yet here we are, facing more restrictions and lockdowns - the very things, along with the vaccines, that have been such a stunning "success" for us.
At least we haven't gone as far as Austria seem to want to . . . . . . . yet.
Does any of this seem reasonable as a response to a disease that might be about twice as bad as a severe flu in terms of overall mortality? Do vaccines passports make any sense whatsoever in terms of public health? Do we imagine our leaders to be quite so stupid and inept not to see what is so obvious to anyone taking an honest look at the data?
The question has to be why. The scale of the deceit, deception and duplicity have been quite remarkable - not to mention the extraordinary propaganda and suppression of information. Does any of this measure up to the actual threat level posed by this double-flu?
We've acted, or rather been continuously driven to act, as if we were facing an Ebola-level threat. A lot of people seem to still be terrified, the spectre of covid is the thing that seems to consume them, being the only thing they can focus on. Why have we been driven to this point?
One thing you can bet your house on. It's not about health.
These are people who once lived under Nazi rule. They must have very short memories.
i've been thoroughly disgusted with the general publics compliant response to the government abuse since this whole "pandemic" began. however, as pessimistic as i've grown over the past 18 months, i truly believe there will be a point that those in 'power' go too far, and the real american spirit is finally unleashed. *this* will be the country that eventually ends this shit. it will probably be a bit ugly, but we didn't start it, so i won't apologize.
Americans just went through totally fraudulent elections but half of people were cheering and the other half are sitting on their asses, doing nothing. Maybe useless flag waving with new slogans, new social media memes, parades and weekend barbecues. Oh yeah, that will show those fuckers in DC! Any minute now they will surrender!
Australia, Canada and New Zealand are really fucking losing it, despite being solid western democracies for hundreds of years.
In other words, a tyrannical takeover can happen anywhere and there is no special magical sauce against it. Your americanism, australialism or whatever-ism will not protect you from it. All you can do is fight against it but the end results are not guaranteed. Just look at North Korea. 80 years of hard pain for the populace and no end in sight.
We made the mistake of believing, after WW2, that fascism had been eradicated. Turns out it was only dormant.
Indeed, don't get a cat pissed off at you...next thing gifts left on beds and outside the box if you know what I mean. Too bad we can't arm cats, they have more bravado than anyone I know. They would get the job done with a whoop-assing so bad the other side would never have seen it coming.
Following on the the Karens piece earlier, perhaps people have no need for freedom. They had that and didn't like it because it created the expectation that they do something with it.
You know things are devastatingly bad when Putin has to warn the West: https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-warns-wokeness-is-destroying-the-west-it-happened-in-russia-its-evil-it-destroys-values
Perhaps they should look at vaccination status for ICU admissions, and if the majority are vaccinated, then house-arrest the vaccinated instead of the unvaccinated.
Of course this is insane, unless your goal is to increase vaccination rates at all costs.
Since the jabs don't stop infection with or transmission of the virus, their futile attempts will fail.
Hold the line. Do not comply.
I’m the cat who shat outside the box. Love it.