it’s fascinating the way the world can go from “what was always known” to “that which everyone knew was the wrong thing” in such rapid progression.
you can toss 1000 years of science, philosophy, and ethics right out the window the minute you get scared. fear is the antithesis of rationality. it’s the drive to “do something right now” and people desperate for this course are easy marks for the guy with the shouty voice on the big white horse.
this is how you get deranged by demagogues. and fear is always their weapon.
and nothing is obvious to scared people except for the fact that they want to stop being scared.
the cycle works a bit like this.
and we are now seeing it everywhere.
ask any doctor in 2019: “should people who have already had a disease get vaccinated against it?” and they would have told you “no.”
this was and is obvious.
vaccines are not magic, they just train your immune system. if recovering from the virus cannot teach it (and almost certainly better) then a vaccine cannot either. no one argues that we use vaccines because they provide better immunity. we use them seeking to provide immunity at lower risk. this whole “vaccinated immunity is superior to immunity acquired by recovery” is entirely made up nonsense that never had any basis whatsoever in biology.
this is all coming out now.
it’s in the scientific literature
and it’s in the mass media.
we are recovering from this bizarre excursion into immunological inversion that suddenly took hold of damn near every health agency on earth.
and make no mistake, the “there is no herd immunity/durable immunity from recovery” was the endless refrain of the health moppets.
and make no mistake, they 100% knew better.
being overly trusting and fooled by them is one thing, but for they themselves to do it was utterly reprehensible.
this was not public health, it was product advertising based on known and knowably false premises.
there is just no other way to spin it.
they deliberately changed the definitions of everything to push this narrative.
it was not an accident.
this was a campaign.
and the goalposts moved so many times it’s hard to even know what game was being played.
and this was hyped into a savage storm of fear messaging and social pressure.
again, it was not an accident.
this was policy. they hired experts and influencers alike to make it so.
once you scare someone sufficiently and apply enough social pressure, you can make the anxious into a stampede demanding to "do something."
you can make even knowledgeable, rational people doubt themselves enough to go along to get along.
you can make them fear the mob.
90%+ of humans fail the asch conformity test.
everyone thinks they will be here:
but most are not.
this is just a fact about crowds and fear.
people didn't get stupid, they got frightened.
they feared to speak up.
they feared to buck the crowd.
and they traded "a little liberty for a little safety."
how'd that work out for you?
this is still one of the best memes of the pandemic.
stay brave, stay free.
this is the real lesson.
and it’s not an easy one.
even those who saw through this mostly failed to stand fast enough. you have to nip this in the bud. the minute they tell you something crazy, there must be mass non-compliance.
once they get the ball rolling with “2 weeks to flatten your resolve” the game is kind of over. they have the momentum.
you get to keep the rights you will fight for, and the fight must be early and instant.
these things are binaries.
you cannot give up “just a little free speech” to make the world safer/nicer/better. give up any, and the rest is just a privilege.
you cannot give up “just a little liberty” or “just a few rights.” look how the state bent doctors by threatening their licenses. look how they closed bars and restaurants using health codes. look how they threatened your right to work and your children to force your compliance.
the “experts” that have been working you over for 3 years were not experts in drugs, epidemiology, biology, immunology, or some other germane field.
they were experts at manipulation, at nudges, at propaganda.
and they have had a field day telling it like it ain’t to take the world on an unprecedented joy ride of hassle and harm.
we have not seen the last of them and rest assured, they will find a way to try this again.
and then as in 2020, fear will be their weapon.
fear will be the mind killer they use to run roughshod over rationality and turn the demos once more into the mob.
and this is why you should stop believing them.
it’s also why our newly forged networks are so important. standing alone is hard. people fare poorly in isolation, in alienation. people alone are easy to scare. people together may draw resolve from one another.
and this is why our networks and not theirs must stand paramount is we would stay free. cultivate them and your connectedness.
unless, of course, you’d like to take this ride again…
They will strip you naked leaving you with nothing but a mask next time.
I am a firm believer that the power of the mask alone was to focus FEAR of all sorts through the object (the mask) itself in an effort to CONTROL us.
A positive feedback loop of FOCUS that led to the most negative of outcomes known to man.
They CONTROLLED the population with a single object that tightened the focus of fear over time.
As for what fear is happening about East Palestine, it isn't fear I feel, it is fury.