wow, i agree with the new york times!
(but probably not with how they meant this)
heck, i'll even go one further: it's a full blown civilizational acid test.
if we let these pseudoscientific charlatans terrify us into submission again while pushing social control as public health, we're done for.
next pandemic they'll crush us.
especially and increasingly in the US, the grab for full bio-tyranny control has failed. more and more of these folks are realizing it. the bastions of health subjugation are going to give it one more run for their money, but it’s falling apart even in places like new york. (i’m not sure anyone can help california. elections have consequences. enjoy the bed you made…)
but this is not a game you only play one time. they are already onto the next one and planning for it and there is one simple fact that’s sure as eggs is eggs:
if you grant near unlimited power to governments during emergencies, they will produce an endless cavalcade of hobgoblins and crises to get at them.
emergency will become the norm.
you might as well try storing your jam in an anthill.
so yes, 100% omicron is the dress rehearsal for the next one.
this is the exam, amigos.
pass it, or fail your society.
if you’re still, at this point in time, falling for this same ridiculous exponential modelling that has underpinned 1000 lockdowns while failing to be right even one single time because this is NOT how viral spread works, you failed.
using this to estimate spread is like designing a powerplant to run on phlogiston.
if you’re still buying the “just one more thing” pitches and the authority of the “experts” who have done nothing but driven a careening clown car through the land of bad predictions and worse prescriptions, you failed.
there will not be smarter guys or better policies next time. just more of this.
so indeed, go rehearse.
rehearse saying “no.”
rehearse disobedience and distrust as you stride upon the boards of this great theater in the round.
rehearse thinking for yourself instead of uncritically swallowing the technocratic impositions of agencies and experts that have been revealed to be political puppetshows run by villains and fools.
the only social inoculum against this miasma of mendacious muppetry is to slap it down.
if there is no price for this misbehavior, it will never stop.
root every one out of office. remove the emergency powers. build the structures to make future revolt easy and file them away to be used early and often at the first sign of any recidivism on the part of the would be authoritarians.
most of all, learn and cultivate bravery.
this oppressive agenda has been around since the 1920’s. it dates back to wilson and perhaps even to bismark. the current crop has been the same folks since the 60’s and 70’s with the club of rome/davos/WEF/whatever.
it’s always there, always trying, always looking for ways to turn the world into the right kind of ant farm run by the right kind of people “for your own good.”
it gets loose and out of control like this when we get scared.
so stop being scared.
the next one will come. it will, like this one, really not be that big of a deal if you don’t let it be (or such a big deal it does not matter a whit what we do). they’ll make up numbers and distort data and definitions. they’ll run wet pants projection models. they’ll push social control as public health and crony corporatism as public interest because that’s what they do.
they’ll panic you then try to sell you peonage as panacea.
your fear is their power.
you cannot change that or them.
what you can change is whether you listen to them.
what you can change is whether you panic into trusting a pack of self serving sociopaths who are sure they know what’s best for you on health and climate and social justice.
you can learn that the media is NOT your friend and that they will gleefully collude in your subjugation for a cheap ratings bump.
but we have built community now. we have found alternate sources of news and data and support. there is no monopoly on message or emergent zeitgeist.
welcome to the samizdat future where we simply leave their gaslit narratives behind and make our own.
because this place belongs to we the people, not they the government.
and their 15 minutes are over.
this is the rehearsal for the beginning of the real show.
once more into the breach, dear friends.
once more.
Bad cat I don’t know exactly what your day job is, but you are one terrific writer.
The most important part of this article is this 5-word sentence: Your fear is their power.