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From Social Distancing to Social(ist) Conditioning
We are being conditioned and acclimated to having to stand in long lines for food.
We are being conditioned to finding, after an hour of waiting in line, that the shelves are empty.
We are being acclimated to rationing (my grocery store this week finally had a tiny section of toilet paper. It was an off-brand I’d never heard of, and the sign on the shelf said “ONE PER CUSTOMER”).
We are being conditioned to view other people, even friends, neighbors, and loved ones, as threats. Neighbors are turning on each other. The Mayor of New York is encouraging people to “report” each other for not following government guidelines, helpfully providing an official phone number and demonstrating how to photograph them in the act. The act of standing less than six feet away from another human being. The act of showing one’s face in the open air in a public place.
We are being made to believe wearing a mask makes us Good Citizens, thoughtful people always thinking of the well-being of others. They’re not mandatory everywhere – yet- but in the cities where they’re optional, people are being conditioned to view the mask-free as selfish, ignoble outliers who don’t care about their fellow man. Yet it wasn’t that long ago that they told us wearing a mask doesn’t help at all. They even told us it gives a false sense of security. What has changed? Or maybe the question should be Cui bono?
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The masks make us anonymous. They make it impossible to share a smile with another person. They add to the general air of suspicion, anxiety, and uncertainty, and they add to an overall impression of dystopia. They erase our individuality and make each of us into just another part of The Group. This makes their exhortations about “The Greater Good” fall right into place.
And they’ve thought of everything. They’ve dealt with the inevitable American spirit of individual liberty and the hardy souls who will say, “To heck with the virus. I’ll take my chances,” by telling us that the mask isn’t just for our own safety, but the safety of others. And just in case that isn’t strong enough, they add the heartrending bit about “our elderly loved ones.” So now, if you don’t wear a mask you’re killing grandma. This is now Social Engineering works.
We’re being made to believe that shutting down the economy including every place of business and social gathering is necessary “for our safety.” Why wasn’t this necessary during the Avian Flu pandemic of 1957? Or the Swine Flu or SARS or West Nile or Zika? They’re trying to paint anyone who sees through the hysteria and takes a stand for freedom, whether by protesting or even just making a comment in dissent, as a bunch of nutjobs (and their parents are probably first cousins, and of course they support Trump because their average IQ is that of a houseplant). I mean they just aren’t as educated, intelligent, and discerning as those who believe the entire world economy needs to stay shut down and the Bill of Rights suspended (it’s for our SAFETY!”).
I’m not saying this flu isn’t more contagious than others have been. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be aware and be careful. But I am saying that if you’re someone who’s so scared that you gave me a dirty look at the grocery store for momentarily pulling my mask down so I could breathe, then you can stay HOME. I sure won’t stop you. But your fear (not to mention fatuous gullibility) doesn’t allow you to tread on my Bill of Rights.
It’s impossible not to see parallels to the totalitarian regimes of history. The devaluing of individual freedoms. The individual being subsumed by The Group. I applaud those who are seeing all this for what it is, and protesting and speaking out. It’s way past time we all speak out as our own @rodin did in Sacramento, and that we stand up and say, “This is America. We don’t do that here.”
The virus is one thing. The dark, sinister forces taking advantage of it is another.
What I hear from “the media” is that if you catch the virus you will die. Well 99% will. The other 1% will have the virus forever and will be able to infect innocent people forever. However, if you lock yourself in your basement while wearing a mask and gloves you will be alive, at least until you run out of food.
Concur. My, what a sweet li’l ray of sunshine.
Hahaha wait why am I laughing, it’s true.
Precisely right. A shared worldview is all that is required.
I just got this link from a friend (Dinesh D’Souza’s new book United States of Socialism):
https://www.facebook.com/216709768355686/posts/3613365402023422/?sfnsn=mo&d=n&vh=e
I don’t think those have human to human transmission. Come from skeeters.
Stop adding facts to my writing!
OK, please outline to me how we get from here to Communism, little step by little step.
Every time these things start up, I get to hear the following:
Because of A we will get F! Somehow, B-E are not quite discussed. I should just be afraid of F!
You know, that is a specific type of thinking error I have helped clients with in practice to lesson their anxiety. Heck, I have had therapist use the coping intervention to counter this error with me.
I don’t believe it comes from skeeters, they are just the transmission vector. Instead of droplets from a sneeze, it’s blood carried from one bite to the next. I’d still call that human to human.
I never said we absolutely will get to F, just that I don’t think it’s an absolute impossibility that we won’t. Why do I think that? Basically because that’s how human nature tends to work. This little change leads to that little change which eventually leads to another change. That’s the main reason I won’t discount it as an eventual possibility – human nature.
Another reason? I’m also currently listening to a series of lectures about the rise of Hitler over at the Great Courses Plus site. According to the professor who’s teaching it, the German people did not immediately embrace the Nazi party. It made inroads little by little. And so I wonder: Why couldn’t something similar happen here? No, I’m not talking about embracing Nazism. I’m talking about the process. Why couldn’t it happen here? Why couldn’t the U.S. – little step by little step – eventually become a socialist or communist country? Why should we think we are automatically immune to a process like that happening here? After all, we’re humans; aren’t we?
Besides, we’re not really headed towards Communism. We’re headed towards Fascism. (In the classic economic/totalitarian sense, not in the “I call bad things I don’t like fascist” sense.)
Not to mention that we’ve already come most of the way. Look at the Communist Party USA party platform from 1930. Other than single-payer, universal health care, we’ve met all their goals already.
My concern is that you are correct: There ARE a whole lot of people out there ready to kick butt – and if they all just hold their peace for now then that will accelerate the coming of what you call a “worst case scenario”. But if we follow the example of rodin, et. al., we may be able to thwart the “kick butt” scenario.
Ignoring the stepwise approach regularly employed by Progressives in moving the nation to more and greater social programs just eases that process for them. The 16th Amendment, allowing the federal government to levy direct taxation in the form of an income tax, led to our first major socialist legislation in the federal government social security program over two decades later. There are numerous other examples to demonstrate the successful use of the incremental approach. Communism just happens to be an extreme form that displays socialism in it most repulsive form.
I think you need to consider how very well established inside his need for grand positioning Bill Gates is. He has made major donations for decades, that affect:
1 the Mainstream Media, both TV and print, and its ability to report on this medical situation with any sort of journalistic integrity
2 the Academic community, like John Hopkins, who has received 1.2 billions of dollars from Gates in last 20 years. So when you hear the media mention Johns Hopkins, think of the inter connections
3 the “respected” and “authoritative experts” on all things health: this includes the WHO and the UN. In fact, Bill Gates basically bought out a health agency in Europe that the UN had set up
4 his connections to the powerful in the political world, such that so many of the “independent” agency heads or division heads in those agencies are actually Bill Gates proxies. How is it that Naill Ferguson retained his position inside the Imperial College in Great Britain? If Ferguson was a mere mortal working on his own, who in the mid-1990’s, mis-advised an entire nation about the need to eliminate their hers of cattle, to the detriment of the meat and dairy industry, and then within a decade the mistake of his mis-advice was known, how did Ferguson retain his position at Imperial College? Once a thinking person realizes that having such a proxy is a good thing for the ultra rich, as if your proxy brings about a major governmental policy, the super rich guy or gal could short the industry involved, and buy up stocks as well buying up as entire companies for pennies on the dollar, such “incidents” begin to make sense.
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I could go on for another hour connecting the dots for you. But the connections exist. President Trump needs to realize the success of his Presidency had a lot to do with his ability to call out the media as “fake news.” He now needs to go one notch higher and start denouncing “health agencies and orgs” and their many Bill Gates proxies as “fake science.”
I’m glad you don’t mind that I pointed out the difference in terminology. There exist people who who would have found some reason to object, and would have done so in ungracious fashion.
So who is this mayor and what city is she the mayor of?
What is even more evil than this type of petty bureaucrat running with all the newly established power she has, is the insidious chain link of logic employed by the Leftist leaders to get people to fall in line.
So on FB, even when people detail how erroneous the “health logic” of wearing masks happens to be, especially given that some people wear the same mask for days, we’re admonished that if we were “polite” than we would consider the needs of the frightened and do our best to let them be less scared.
I mean, I might not want to enter a cattle car on some railroad train that will whisk me off for my own protection, but since it might be scary to my neighbor that I don’t agree to do it, I guess will!
A. Putin is am opportunist in the way he amasses more power and tries to restore Russian imperialism. Not even he knows exactly what steps he will take next or who will be his next target.
B. Ok, please outline the steps he will take to restore the Russian empire, showing each little step in the process.
A. Sigh.
I wish you weren’t one of them as well. Our experiences somewhat match. So I join you in the misery: I had gotten on an international radio show last December, and for the first time in recent memory made some serious money on my writing. But now the only people out there that are desired for that radio format are COVID experts.
Also I know of someone who finally after years of paying their dues, was selected to be the main actor in a real Hollywood film production. He even got the leading role!
Now that film has been cancelled.
The Federal Reserve’s creation, & the 1916 income tax supposed ratification themselves should not be labeled as “Socialist.” This was all about having a manner by which the expenses of our country entering the very well planned out WWI military actions and our involvement in it could be handled. I just wanted that emphasized.
That was very prescient of them.
“Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xvi
I have next door, too – useful for some things, horrific in other ways. This is one of them, in terms of horror.
Ours is a total dumpster fire every day now. NextDoor posted rules about the virus, and they don’t abide by them at ALL. They say no posts without links to back them up, no misinformation, etc, and yet that’s all you see. And today we have a Gladys Kravitz who ran around taking pictures of people outdoors talking to each other without masks. She posted a pic of some of them today with an accusatory headline as if they’re a pack of murderers or something. I mean get a life, Gladys. Go polish your Thought Police badge or something.
Have you read “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer yet? It is one of the most amazing things I ever read. That was something I thought before I learned the author pulled up his family and took them to Germany under the Marshall Plan so he could interview German citizens about what had happened to them personally in the buildup to WWII.
Even more amazing: the author was Jewish and disguised this information so that people would talk to him freely.
When you can’t nag your neighbors as to the appropriate lengths of the blades of grass that cover their lawns, well, you’ve gotta bone up on yer inner Stalin and start ratting out and pointing “UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!”
No I haven’t read it. Sounds interesting, though. I’ll have to see if I can get a copy of it. :)
Bryan, we’ve been ratcheting in this direction, annually, for the better part of the last 50 years. And you’re asking *us* to lay it out for you?
Here’s one: Being told when and where you can work.
Here’s two: Being told where you can publicly assemble.
Here’s three: Being told what to wear (facemasks, after being told they didn’t do anything)
Here’s four: The state, seriously considering badging its citizens – who is marked as healthy, and who is UNCLEAN.
You *have* seen the reports of individual surfers being arrested for the crime of surfing? Nowhere near other people. Surfing. Hey, sorry – you’re under arrest, brah.
All of these things happen incrementally, in parallel with federal budgeting – it only ratchets in one direction.
No not prescient – but rather in line with what the PTB of the time wanted to have happen soon. We are taught that these major crises happen overnight. But how is it that European nations had entered into a very serious means of control, that is, the treaties they held with certain neighbors and against others, which aimed toward the provocation of war over any incident no matter how minor? How is it so many treaties were signed that if this nation was hammered by that one, then a slew of events became triggered?
Remember, the Big Monied people controlled things on both sides of the Pond then, just as happens now. The New York, Wall Street people had their inter connections with the top people at the major financial firms of Great Britain and Europe long before we had a Council of Foreign Relations, a Bilderberg society, et al.
Here is one of the most important overheard political conversations ever:
You may be unaware of one of our nation’s first highly regarded women journalists, a lady named Dorothy Thompson.
George Seldes, who was a Chicago Tribune correspondent in the late Nineteen teens and up until 1929 relates the conversation that he had with Dorothy Thompson -another news reporter and the wife of Sinclair Lewis:
Thompson told Seldes in 1935 that while en route by ocean liner from France to NYC how a Mr. F. Sinclair, a Big Money Guy, took her from the table where they were eating to talk privately with her.
“See those folks at the table who were eating with us?” F Sinclair asks Thompson?
“Yes,” answers Dorothy.
“Well, all of us are the ones who decide who gets nominated to run for the Presidency and who gets to win that office.”
Among those he indicated was an important associate of the Giannini family, who established Bank of America. (Giannini family headed up Bank of America.)
“”We give money on both sides of the aisle, so that no matter what, one of our people is always in a place to do our bidding.”
“What about FDR?” asked Dorothy.
“Our support for him was a major misjudgement on our part. We saw to it that he had money and of course, we fully expected for him to say the sort of things that he always said. We just didn’t expect him to act on those statements.”
Mr F. Sinclair went on to state for the purpose of Thompson’s enlightenment that the Inner Circle of Power Brokers was attempting to raise some five to twenty million to defeat FDR in 1936.
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But that’s what you’d think if you got all your news from certain well known “media” sources. Why there’s so much fear – any exposure to the virus means certain painful death, and probably quickly before you could get any treatment.