It seems like only yesterday that...
no, actually, it seems like it's been ten years since... I put out a
blog post entitled “Conspiracies on Parade” (April 19, 2020 –
still available!) inspired by the -- at that time – new and
springtime-fresh plague that was well on its way to making a shambles
of the economy and of society in general – not that plagues do this
unaided, but that the “policies” imposed and enforced by
totalitarian means to “manage” the plague had appeared almost
overnight – which kind of makes you wonder, were they already set
up in advance and only had to wait until the “balloon went up”,
as the saying goes? (File this under the heading of “suspected,
but unproven”. More to come.)
If you have the time and the
inclination, I urge you to re-read (OK, read, whatever) the post in
question in order to set the tone for the present discussion. In
some ways, it's incredible that this problem is still with us –
whatever happened to “15 days to slow the spread”? (That was the
2020 version of “duck and cover” – reassuring until people
realized that it was totally absurd.)
So – using the 4/19/20 post as a
baseline, I'm going to take advantage of the breather that has been
bestowed upon us by Vladimir Putin, who, merely by invading Ukraine,
has managed to drive all competing stories off the mainstream print
and broadcast media and the Internet. We can argue all day as to
what this means, as in – does it mean that Covid, nee Corona, was
never real to begin with, and as such cannot hope to compete with
events that are very real? Or does it mean that Covid entering Year
3 has become a bit shopworn, so even if it is genuine it's no match
for newer and more exciting current events? Or is it just the MSM
chasing the newest butterfly, and Covid will circle around eventually
and become, once again, the Big Story?
I guess we have both Covid and Ukraine
to thank for reminding us that “the news” is not necessarily
what's actually most important at the time (or possibly at any other
time as well), but is the result of a selection process by the
collective organs of propaganda designed to maximize and accelerate
the cycle of fear, and thus create, in the citizenry, despair of ever
truly exercising their rights as free citizens, but to substitute an
even more intense feeling of helplessness and willingness to submit
to the government, AKA the ruling elite, for all their needs
(including all the things they've been convinced, by the advertising
industry, that they need). If fewer people than ever distrust “the
news”, and government in general, that could be considered at least
a thin silver living to the cloud that has been looming over us for
two-plus years.
So – let's get started. The most
obvious initial question is, is (was) Corona/Covid a hoax? Is it
really a “novel” virus of murky origins that has attacked,
without warning, the global population and necessitated a total reset
of national economies and people's life styles? I admit that I
haven't studied the matter in detail, but it appears that there
actually is a virus out there, and that it is “novel”, in that it
exhibits new qualities and new combinations of qualities (including
symptoms and responses to medication and treatment), and that it's
not “just the flu” as some have claimed (for one thing, it
doesn't seem to exhibit the same seasonal cycles as the typical flu
virus). And it appears that it does, indeed, mutate – thankfully
from more dangerous to less harmful versions, but – this time more
like the flu – it comes along in waves, and it will be a long time,
if ever, before we will see the end of it. And the fact that it can
attack people of all ages, all races/creeds/colors, in all climates,
of all social and economic conditions, etc., indicates that it is
robust and adaptable, even if the more serious cases seem to
correlate with preexisting conditions like age, general health,
obesity, life style, whether or not they watch TV (not a complete
joke), and so on.
I present the foregoing as an unproven
basis of reference for what follows. (For those who believe it truly
is/was a complete hoax, don't touch that dial, because I'll be
discussing ideas that you will find appealing aside from the hoax
question.)
OK. The first theory I discussed in
the previous post was:
Yes,
it originated in China, but it was no accident. It was an
intentional biological attack on the U.S. in retaliation for
economic and trade sanctions, our position on Taiwan, our positions
on currency manipulation, intellectual property, etc. As such, it
was intended to be a “shot off our bow”, i.e. get out of our
face or else (it could be worse).
Discussion: The China origin theory is
still in question – by China. Again, choosing probability over
proof (which is impossible at this point), I would say that China is
the culprit. But then, was it intentional? And the first argument
against this would be – if it was, why wasn't it aimed at the U.S.
in a more precise, “surgical” manner? Why let it out of a lab in
a city no one had ever heard of up to that point, and let it run amok
in the local population, when it could have simply been shipped over
here and added to the water supply in certain major cities? Answer:
Can you say “plausible deniability”, class? If the first victims
were Chinese citizens, that would tend to derail any notion that the
virus was aimed at the U.S. – and as for any notion that normal
human compassion would have prevented the Chinese government from
doing such a thing, just take a weekend off some time and read up on
Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution for a taste of how
highly the Chinese government values human life.
Having said that, as retaliation for
economic and trade sanctions, something that pretty much trashed the
world's economy and brought world trade to a halt for a time would
seem to be an odd way of going about this. (They would have been
much better off demanding that we pay off their share of our national
debt.) And as for Taiwan, the Chinese are playing the long game, and
sure enough, it's already paying off with our response to Russia's
invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese are seeing what Russia can and
can't get away with, and they may be perfectly willing to commit to
the same outcome for the sake of reclaiming Taiwan. (But it wouldn't
be as severe, because China has a much firmer foothold in the U.S.
economy than Russia ever had.)
And as for currency manipulation, guess
who just put the ruble on the gold standard. That's sending more
shock waves through global monetary systems than anything China ever
did.
Intellectual property? The Chinese are
buying so much of it up on the global market that they scarcely have
to steal it any longer.
To sum up, the predictable outcome of a global pandemic would have been seen as “overkill” when it
comes to getting our attention – not that China is incapable of any
sort of blackmail and extortion, nor do they have any qualms about
doing so. It's more a proportionality question. But before we leave
this idea totally, consider Variation 1:
Variation
1: It was a probe – a test case – to see how effective
biological warfare would be, what our response would be, etc. Corona
was never intended to be the ultimate weapon, in other words; that's
still under development.
I'll
use the “precision” argument again on this one. You can test
biological warfare agents in a smaller area than the entire planet.
However, having said that, even if the release was not intentional it
did indeed serve as a test case, which could serve quite well if, in
the future, China decides to resort to biological extortion. (This
falls under the heading of “unintentional consequences which turn
out to be beneficial” – at least in one respect.) And yes,
anyone who doesn't see Covid as the beta version of something much
worse is dreaming. But then how about:
Variation
2: The intention was not only near-term but long-term. By bringing
the U.S. to its knees economically, China would be assuring its
ascent to the position of leading economic power on the planet –
and, soon to follow, leading military power.
This
is actually a more likely motive. Any plague that impacts the entire
globe will impact the U.S., and more severely in some respects, since
we have the most complex, multi-layered, interdependent economy on
earth – a benefit of our technological and logistical
sophistication, but also an Achilles' Heel, as was brought out in
sharp relief in the first few months of the pandemic. “The bigger
they are, the harder they fall” could have been coined to describe
what happened to the U.S. economy – true no matter what one thinks
of the motives of the authorities. Could China have predicted a
total lockdown of the U.S. economy? Seems unlikely, but who can say?
They may have actually been pleasantly surprised at the readiness
with which our officials committed economic suicide. In any case, it
did serve to weaken us on both an absolute scale and also relative to
other less complex, less “developed” economies around the globe.
I
say this is more likely, but I would still not give it a very high
grade, for the simple reason that China already has a virtual
stranglehold on large sectors of the U.S. economy, and why “blow
it” by causing unneeded distress, chaos, and destruction? Leave
the heavy-handedness to others. Remember, when it comes to China,
the long game and patience are the watchwords, as they have been
throughout their history.
OK,
then – but how about:
Variation
3: The focus was on causing major damage to our military, which has
turned out (no surprise, if you know anything about history) to be
particularly vulnerable to viral infections and epidemics. If you can
sap the strength of the U.S. military, and get it to stand down, it's
much easier for China to continue its high jinks in the South China
Sea unimpeded. (If the military was the prime target, then the
civilian population counts only as “collateral damage” –
something that aggressors are always willing to accept.)
I
think we can safely dispense with this one. Our military turned out
to be quite robust in its response to the pandemic, and the fact that
military personnel tend to be young and healthy, and in good physical
condition, was probably the best preventive one could hope for. And
yes, disease has ever been the enemy of armies – but they didn't
have the resources we have, and Covid turns out to be much less
deadly than most of the traditional, “old-fashioned” diseases
that armies are prone to.
However,
this does not mean that something much more lethal couldn't be
unleashed, in a more precise fashion, on our military, either in
garrison or in war zones – and this is the very reason that the
military has long been heavily involved in research and prevention
when it comes to biological warfare. So from that point of view, the
“test case” theory – even if unintentional – gets high marks.
Then
there's the footnote to the preceding scenarios:
China
has decided that a direct military confrontation with the U.S. would
be costly, and they might not even win. So they had to come up with
something completely different (if not totally unexpected – after
all, we've been studying the biological warfare issue since before
World War II).
Again,
Covid turned out to be a dud in this respect, but it may have paved
the way for something worse – something that could turn the tide
in a military confrontation. But this assumes (1) conventional
forces rather than air power only (or nukes); and (2) solving the
precision issue (recall how mustard gas attacks in World War I often
backfired when the wind shifted). So this is certainly a reason for
vigilance.
That
was the first scenario with variations. Now we shift gears a bit:
It
was a false flag operation on the part of the globalists and their
collaborators in the U.S. (including no small portion of the Deep
State). See that China gets the blame, while in fact they are
creating a crisis in order to (1) cut the U.S. down to size, and (2)
increase the power of central government exponentially, which will,
in turn, (3) increase the power of the globalist elite once they
consolidate their control over the U.S. government, which will, at
that point, become a mere proxy or shadow government for the
globalist empire, the way most Western European governments already
are.
“False
flag?” That's exactly what the Chinese are claiming, and they
haven't given up on that story. My sense is that the preponderance
of evidence indicates that the origin was in China and connected to a
Chinese military research facility. But again – was it “an ill
wind” that provided unexpected benefits to those with globalist
tendencies? Certainly. When you see the ease with which the U.S.
economy was, for all intents and purposes, nationalized (the
government not taking over, but regulating, down to the most minute
detail, businesses from the largest to the most minuscule) – and
the ease with which virtually all other human activities were either
locked down or closely monitored (schools, shopping, dining, live
entertainment, etc.), the results could only have warmed the hearts
of globalists and totalitarians everywhere. If America, the land of
the free, can be turned into a land of helpless victims, paralyzed by
fear, almost overnight, then there is no limit, is there? If it can
happen here it can happen anywhere (and has, by and large –
especially (ironically) in the other English-speaking countries).
Now...
if you've noticed an apparent contradiction between the agenda of
cutting the U.S. down to size and increasing the power of central
government, allow me to clarify. We get cut down to size on the
international/global/diplomatic level (well under way with Biden in
charge), but on the domestic level become more totalitarian (ditto).
The result is that the citizenry become acclimated to big government
that meddles in every aspect of their lives, but at the same time the
global elite are consolidating their reach and their power, with
America as first prize. So the transition from what we have now to
one-world government would be painless, if even noticeable. (This is
assuming it hasn't already happened, which is a point worth
debating.) I think this is the long-term plan with or without China,
and with or without Covid – just that Covid has served to
accelerate the process and provide a convenient rationale for
measures which would otherwise have looked obviously tyrannical.
So
really, the question of whether or not to “blame” China has faded
into obscurity at this point. The test case was created,
intentionally or not, and it had results... data were gathered... and
the outlines of what global tyranny would look like became shockingly
clear. Shockingly – because of how easy it was. We thought we
valued freedom, but the next minute we were locking ourselves indoors
for months at a time, then marching off, robot-like, to vaccination
centers, with “smiley faces” everywhere you look. The wonderful
world of George Orwell is here! It's no longer a threat, or a
distant possibility.
I
would say that of all the “benefits” of the plague – looked-for
and otherwise – this has to stand as the one that will be seen to
have made the most difference in the long run. The global elite has
the citizenry by the – well, you know – and half the citizenry
doesn't care, and the other half are reduced to bootless protests for
which they are promptly punished.
And
again, the U.S. was more severely impacted simply because of the
titanic structure of our economy and the social mechanisms that go
with it, and this did indeed cut us down, not quite to size, but
enough to provide welcome data for the global elite's future
planning. The U.S. will not be a pocket of resistance, in other
words – we will not be the Ukraine to the global elite's Russia.
There will be resistance, for sure; there already is. But the main
elements have been shown up in all of their weakness and
vulnerability – the ready demoralization of the populace is now a
historical fact – and we have, when you run the numbers, many more
who comply, and cooperate, and follow the crowd off the cliff than
those troublemakers who believe in liberty and self-sufficiency. And
don't think any of this has gone unnoticed. It will come back to
haunt us, and sooner than we expect.
OK
then... how about this:
It
was cooked up by the vaccination industry and lobby in order to
demonstrate, once and for all, that vaccination is the only way to
survive, and that vaccinations for every conceivable ailment, up to
and including toenail fungus, should be mandated by the government,
and anyone who objects should be arrested and jailed because their
reckless ideas threaten public health.
This
is another case of a “discovered benefit”. I don't think the vax
people started it, but the way they jumped on it indicates that it
was, for them, a blessing in disguise – not only because it freed
up unlimited funding, but it gave them time (nearly a year) to work
up the narrative that vaccination was the only thing that was going
to save the human race from this plague – and that any alternative
treatments were unscientific, dangerous, and should be banned. And
this is still the basic narrative, although things have loosened up a
bit with regard to therapeutics, owing largely to the pressure of
public (1) skepticism re vaccination and (2) demand for alternatives.
And of course, the counter-narratives about the dangers of the
vaccines, side effects, unexplained deaths, etc. added to the mix.
As did, of course, the passage of time, which showed that refusing to
be vaccinated was not a death sentence, and that the “unvaxed”
were not an army of Typhoid Marys out to infect and kill everyone
else.
Another
contributing factor – and perhaps the most important one – has
been the complete and utter politicization of the whole thing. First
it was “Trump's vaccine”, which no self-respecting liberal would
submit to. And then the instant Biden moved into the White House it
became “Biden's vaccine”, which acquired sacramental status among
liberals, but caused skepticism and downright paranoia among Trump
supporters, conservatives in general, libertarians, and pretty much
anyone else who could be described as anti-establishment.
So
what are we to make of a medical treatment that is accepted or
rejected based almost solely on one's political position? There are
other things in medicine that show a similar phenomenon, and things
in the food and beverage industries as well, but this seems like an
extreme case, which is odd since we're supposedly talking about
“science” here, right? Isn't that one of the few areas of life
in which we can find general agreement? Well... no. The lesson is
that when science is corrupted by politics it ceases to be science,
for all intents and purposes. It becomes a battleground and a
political cause instead – and given what has been going on for many
years with “global warming”, AKA “climate change”, this
should not have come as a complete surprise.
And
this phenomenon is not limited to the “unwashed” by any means.
Scientists themselves tend to become defensive at the drop of a hat,
as witness the grandiose statements by Anthony Fauci. (Didn't he, at
one point, say “I AM science”, or something to that effect? And
here I thought Louis XIV had retired.) But this is because they
have, at some point, left science behind and opted to become media
stars (Fauci again) – and once this happens there is no turning
back, because your credibility is in the dumpster.
(And
don't get me wrong. I'm a trained scientist myself – but I think I
know where science leaves off and politics (and personal agendas)
begin. Science is supposed to be self-correcting; in fact, that's
one of its essential qualities, without which it devolves into belief
and opinion. When the self-correcting function is disabled (as it
was with much of the media coverage of the pandemic and the
treatments) then whatever remains is untrustworthy and deserves all
the skepticism it attracts.)
Try
a thought experiment here. What if the space program – not the
funding priorities but the actual technology – had turned into a
political battlefield? We'd never have even gotten into orbit, leave
alone to the Moon (relax, Moon landing skeptics – I'm just trying
to make a point here). It's interesting that when it comes to rocket
science, which very people understand (hence the meme), politics
tends to take a back seat – or no seat at all. But when it comes
to medicine, which everybody thinks they understand to some extent
(especially media talking heads and entertainment types), politics
can take over with no trouble. Oh, but – you might say –
medicine is an inexact science compared to the pure physics of
rocketry; there is plenty of room for opinion and debate. Fair
enough, but that opinion and debate should still be confined to the
sphere of science rather than becoming raw meat for the media,
Internet, and late-night talk shows. Covid seems to have turned the
entire populace, from the lowest to the highest, into medical
experts, whereas it more likely just accelerated and amplified the
pre-existing level of ignorance.
And
then we have –
It
was a false flag operation on the part of our own Deep State, which
seeks (1) a death blow to the Trump administration, because all other
efforts have failed; and (2) an exponential increase in the power and
reach of the Deep State, with the ultimate goal of complete control
of the citizenry, including monitoring all movements, transactions,
and social contacts. (The totalitarian dream, in other words.)
This
would make sense if one considers the Corona/Covid virus to be a
complete hoax. I have allowed that there is “something” to it,
just not as presented in the doomsday/end-of-the-world manner of the
health establishment early on, and their facilitators in the media.
But – never letting a crisis go to waste, the enemies of Donald
Trump, which were (and continue to be) legion, jumped at the chance
to accuse Trump & Co. of “not doing enough” – as if anyone
knew, at the time, what should be done. The utter chaos that
characterized (and continues to) things like masks, social distancing,
isolation, etc. – recall that this was pre-vaccination – was
happily used, by his enemies, as a mark against Trump. Another
discovered benefit, in other words.
I
think it can at least be postulated that, despite all of the efforts
of the combined Deep State, the media, academia, the entertainment
industry, Congress, the intelligence/law enforcement community, etc.
to bring down Trump and his administration, it might have survived
the election of 2020 if Covid hadn't been in the mix. But along with
everything else, Covid became the poison pill that put Biden over the
top. I can't prove this, of course, but I present it as a
possibility.
As
for the larger issue of increasing the power and reach of the Deep
State, it certainly accomplished that to some degree, as any crisis
will, which is why we now have, firmly established, government-by-crisis (being a perfect
reflection of the media, for whom crises are their life's blood).
The
biggest surprise, however, was the extent to which mayors and
governors have absolute power – or, let's say, they can assume
absolute power and no one can stop them. It turns out that mayors
really do rule cities, and that governors really do rule states –
to a much more thorough extent than anything the federal government
is capable of at this point. In an ironic sort of way, this should
have been good news to libertarians and fans of subsidiarity – but
of course it depended on whether the officials in question had
libertarian leanings, or whether they fancied themselves
mini-Napoleons. Unfortunately, there were more of the latter type
than of the former. But still, as a lesson learned, it was quite
striking, and one should take it to heart whenever elections come
around. Your vote might wind up electing the next tinhorn dictator –
is that what you want?
Or
–
It
was a false flag operation on the part of our economic “planners”,
political ideologues, “agents of change”, and the ruling elite.
Getting rid of Trump is necessary, but it's only a first step. The
main goal is to deliver the final death blow to the American middle
class, and finally achieve what the elites have been dreaming of for
generations – namely, a slave state made up of serfs and rulers,
with the middle class eliminated as an economic and political factor.
Note that:
The
titans of big business have no problem at all with the shutdown –
in fact, they're urging Trump to keep it going indefinitely. That
should be a clue right there. And with their cash reserves, they can
weather just about anything while they wait for their “stimulus”
check from the Treasury Department.
The
ruling elite and the working classes have recently discovered a
common cause in demonizing the middle class and gradually eroding
its resources and influence. This is exemplified in the makeup of
the Democratic Party.
The
economic shutdown is having a much more severe effect on the middle
class – in terms of employment, income, and small business –
than on big business (an example being the DJIA, which took a major
hit but is still alive and well, because it represents big business,
which has sufficient reserves to ride this out, whereas small
businesses are dropping like flies and unlikely to recover). (It's
also possible that the scheme included letting the Dow take a hit as
a cover – “See, we're suffering too”, etc. But see what
recovers first when this is over with.)
Again,
I don't trust the false-flag idea, but as a discovered benefit –
sure. Who suffered the most from the lockdowns? Well, we know the
answer – small business, i.e. an activity of the middle class.
Small businesses of all sorts, with the possible exception of
carry-outs, were indeed dropping like flies for many months – and
Internet-based businesses (owned by oligarchs) prospered as never
before. Which is to say that countless middle-class people took an
economic hit and became no longer middle class, but members of the
vast army of “service industry” wage earners.
So
has this situation reversed itself to any significant degree? I
don't have the numbers of this, but what I suspect is that people who
became accustomed to buying via the Internet decided it wasn't a bad
idea – kind of convenient, actually – a lot of choices, etc.
Stuff gets delivered. And so on. So if there is a recovery, I
suspect it's far from complete – and one could argue that there's
nothing wrong with this, but that would be to say that small
businesses ought to just go quietly away and leave it up to Amazon.
Pardon me if I'm somewhat sentimental about “Main Street” and the
people who work there (or used to).
I'm
going to copy the footnotes to the above theory without further
comment. I think they still have considerable general relevance
independently of the Covid era. (And please excuse the formatting issues -- they are beyond my total control.)
Footnote
1: Why is the middle class so despised and persecuted? (And why, for
that matter, has this process been going on ever since the
Progressive Era, although it has become much more blatant over the
last 50 years?) For one thing, it tends to be, and vote,
conservatively-- especially if you're talking about people in
agriculture, small business, and the skilled trades. People who do
meaningful work that has a well-defined product, and people with ties
to the land, are naturally more conservative. It's the paper traders
and parasites who tend toward the liberal side.
Footnote
2: What the people in charge of this project intend is for small
business to vanish, and for all of those enterprises to be absorbed
into vast industrial and commercial cartels which will eventually
become synonymous with the State. Note that (1) this process is
already underway, with predatory large businesses gobbling up small
businesses at a rapid rate, and turning those business owners into
franchisees at best, and wage slaves at worst; and (2) what we call
“crony capitalism” will, in its ultimate state of evolution,
become either business being a wholly-owned subsidiarity of the
State, or vice versa. This will be a distinction without a
difference. Whether those in charge are called CEOs or commissars
will make no difference to the disenfranchised citizenry.
Footnote
3: But how does a “modern, industrialized society” function
without a middle class? We've had that discussion before. The answer
is that it doesn't – not in the way we're used to. But the Soviet
Union managed to pull it off for many decades. (China, on the other
hand, was stuck in the stone age until they decided to try a bit of
free enterprise and property rights. And apparently it worked.)
And
finally...
It
was a deal worked out between China – birth-control experts
extraordinaire – and the ZPG cartel, to reduce populations
worldwide because free and unrestricted abortion has failed to do
the job (as has war).
It
was an act of sabotage by the “greens” and eco-fanatics, who are
already celebrating the improvement in air quality as the result of
restrictions on commerce and travel.
As
to the first, the birth-control movement always has a keen interest
in anything that threatens to reduce global populations, whether by
“natural causes” or otherwise. China has, of course, been on the
side of radical birth control for decades; less so in the U.S., and
here one notices that the campaign is typically aimed at certain
selected minorities – the same ones that Margaret Sanger didn't
think too much of. But as for a deal having been made, again I see
what may have been an accident as a test case as well. I'm sure it
got the attention, in particular, of not only birth-control advocates
but ZPG types, and the even more radical element that wants to reduce
global populations back to levels of a few decades ago. In the
practical sense, using biological weapons as a shotgun approach to
reducing populations would certainly raise containment issues. After
all, we all breathe the same air (at least I assume the ruling elites
do).
As
for the “greens”, now that one of the benefits of working from
home, or not working, has been brought out in sharp relief, you can
expect them to continue to promote this as a good trend (and, having
dealt with traffic on the D.C. Beltway for many years, I find it hard
to disagree).
But
speaking of biological weapons... the “elephant in the room” in
all of this, and something that is completely suppressed by the
mainstream media, is the question of what on earth we were doing not
only working with the Chinese government on biological warfare
research, but actually supporting it (Fauci again). I mean... OK,
we've been experimenting with bio-warfare agents for decades,
presumably in order to develop defenses in case the technology is
aimed at us (either at our military or our population in general).
And it wouldn't be all that scandalous if we were working with our
allies on the same thing. But China? Our “enemy”, “rival”,
“competitor for world dominance”? I mean, what's going on here?
Maybe someone figured that the old saying “keep your friends close
and your enemies closer” should apply to bio-warfare research. Or,
maybe we were anticipating that someday we and China would be working
together in order to... what? You can see why the MSM don't want to
open this can of worms. And yet, I think it's the most important
question that can be asked at this point. If we worked with China
and funded this research and then something “escaped”, isn't that
just as much our fault as theirs? In order to make any sense of
this, you have to go way beyond the standard conspiracy model.
In
a world of paradoxes, a few stand out when it comes to Covid. One is
that there was a sudden and significant centralization of commerce
(from “brick and mortar” to the Internet), but at the same time a
decentralization of the workplace (office vs. home, school vs. home).
Also, the pandemic was “managed” (so to speak) by the federal
government in terms of distribution of healthcare resources and
information (just kidding – it was the opinions of “experts”
who changed their minds on a daily basis). But there was also
considerable management – much of it way more effective than the
federal variety – at the state and local level. Likewise, the more
localized policy decisions tended to be more effective and less
economically/socially disruptive than the diktats that came down from
on high (Washington, D.C., that is). The “experts” on the
federal payroll couldn't avoid contradicting each other (and
themselves) on a regular basis, whereas there were some more
level-headed types working things out at the state (some, not all)
and local (ditto) level.
Another
unanticipated consequence was the discovery – out of sheer
necessity – of home schooling, by parents who had never considered
it as a possibility up to then. In many cases they decided they
liked it – and that it was, in some cases, worth giving up that
second paycheck for – so they kept their kids home even after the
schools opened up again – much to the dismay, I'm sure, of the
teachers' unions and the boards of education. (And I'm sure the
grass-roots movement against the teaching of CRT, and things like the
transgender locker room issue, didn't hurt the cause either.)
And
last but far from least, we have the most general phenomenon
resulting from all of this, namely the ever-widening political and
social gap in American society. It was there before, of course –
it's been there pretty much since the Founding, but what was arguably
a fault line in the 1960s has grown into a canyon, and you can credit
Covid and the responses to it, along with the War on Trump, for the
yawning abyss we see before us now. And yes, there was a lot more
going on in 2020 than a new mystery disease, lest we forget; it was
truly an annus horribilis. But some good has come from it as
well, it seems to me. Another layer of our much-treasured American
optimism and naivete has been chipped away – and I for one would
rather see things more as they truly are than to cling to illusions.
And anyone with a sense of history can at least appreciate the fact
that so much has been brought out in sharp relief – mostly bad, but
some good as well. As I've said before, no one wants to live in
history – it's too messy, confusing, chaotic, and dangerous. Much
better to sit back and view it from afar – in books, on Wikipedia,
in movies, etc. But when you're in it, you're in it, and there's no
sense in pretending things are any other way.
Thus,
my take on Covid and some of the theories that were floating around
early on – and continue to do so in many cases. I have chosen to
argue against one major class of theories having to do with
intentional release of the virus; the probability is still not zero,
and never will be, but it just doesn't seem to fit into the big
picture. However, the overall theme of “discovered benefits” –
mostly negative in their impact on the plain citizen – can be found
at every turn. “Cui bono?” And I would say, basically, the
usual suspects – globalists, totalitarians, would-be dictators,
population control advocates, the ruling elite, multinational
corporations, anti-Americans everywhere (including here in America),
Big Medicine, Big Pharma, the utterly shameless mainstream media, the
Deep State, dictator wannabe's everywhere, population and
environmental activists... but also China itself, and biological
warfare specialists, all benefiting from the rich data base created
by the pandemic.
Who,
on the other hand, has suffered the most? Again, the usual victims –
the beleaguered middle class, freedom and liberty in general,
patriots, and those with a residual and naive trust in government.
The good news is that many of these have put up a fight. They
protested... they engaged in civil disobedience... the asserted
themselves as citizens of a free (even if no longer free) country.
The human spirit is not to be conquered by mere diktats or the
pronouncements of tyrants – or of the increasingly transparent
propaganda apparatus.
And
of course there is always that first casualty of war (or any major
crisis), namely the truth. We look in vain to find it in the “news”,
the media, political speeches, and pronouncements of the current
administration and many governors' and mayors' offices. It's truly a
taste of what many people around the world had to put up for
generations, and continue to do so in many cases – Soviet Russia
and its clones come first to mind, but there are other guilty parties
as well.
And
dare we point out the serious damage this episode did to families,
local organizations, freedom of assembly, freedom of association,
freedom of speech, freedom of medical choice, neighborhoods, and
friendships? There are people to this day peering out from behind
masks... at other people peering out from behind masks. (A better
stage set for a dystopian drama, where individuality and personhood
have been abolished, can hardly be imagined.) There are countless
places one is not allowed to enter without a “vax card” (“Your
papers, please” – says the guy in the trench coat with the Luger
in his pocket). Paranoia has a new face, except that it's just half
a face. The “unvaxed” have been made second-class citizens...
no, worse – lepers! Unclean! Truly, the pod people have taken
over in many parts of the country. And yes, the madness seems to be
abating a bit, but there has been permanent damage, and the scars
will remain – for a lifetime I imagine.
But
to end on a more positive note – the eternal verities are still
with us because they are indeed eternal. They may be attacked and
persecuted by malevolent rulers, but they will not die because they
are an essential component of human nature – and in this, at least,
we may have hope.
