Giorgio Agamben had, for a few decades before 2020, been known as one of the most judicious thinkers in the world. Since the genesis of what has been called a pandemic, his public image has undergone a radical change. In lieu of praise, he has courted the savage hatred of very many people. Even derogatory labels like “crackpot,” “lunatic,” “coronavirus denier,” and “crazy anti-vaxxer” have been accorded to him.
A new totalitarianism is emerging in our society. Not a communist or fascist totalitarianism but a technocratic totalitarianism. A kind of totalitarianism that is not led by “a gang leader” such as Stalin or Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. As always, a certain part of the population will resist and won’t fall prey to the mass formation.
In these times, when calls for crisis government and more emergency powers for the administrative state seem to grow louder by the day, the legislators in Congress — the people’s representatives and trustees — ought to pause, look around the Capitol, and consider the long tradition of freedom and dignity that is our inheritance and could still be their legacy.
I don’t care, I don’t know,
I don’t care to know.
I don’t know, I don’t care,
I don’t know how to care.
Why is there so much focus on Pfizer in public discussion of the Covid vaccine market, virtually to the exclusion of BioNTech and even in discussion by seasoned financial analysts?
Social distancing was not really about preserving hospital capacity and it was not just about two weeks. It was really about the complete reconstruction of social life itself, critiqued as pathogenetic starting 12,000 years ago, with Covid as only the latest example of the costs of free association.
Religious persons today are a threat, but not to public safety as the narrative instructs us. They are a threat to the idea that the state is to be worshipped above all else, to the religion that’s trying to take their place, to the idea that it’s possible to find a compelling and complete sense of meaning outside of the state.
There is absolutely no theory of political economy in existence that could possibly justify this combination of 1) private company with vast tax funding, 2) government-enforced monopoly claims of ownership, 3) indemnification against damage claims, 4) publicly-traded stocks, plus and 5) a forced customer base. And to top it all off, it’s not even clear that the product worked; it certainly did not live up to the wild claims from top government officials.
Obviously this is nowhere close to a comprehensive list of the incomprehensible stupidity that Fauci’s demonstrated over the past few years. A full list would require a book, or several books to chronicle. His incompetence, hubris, awe-inspiring ego and commitment to being wrong in every possible circumstance is quite literally incomparable.
Science is like a weathervane: it gives you information, which you can use to decide on a course of action, but it doesn’t tell you what to do. The decision belongs to you, not to the swirling metal rooster. A weathervane can tell you there’s a stiff wind coming in from the northwest, but it can’t tell you how to respond to the data.
Unvaccinated tennis champion Novak Djokovic is not the villain in this story, he is the unlikely hero for “my body, my choice” autonomy, and individual freedom.
Over socially distanced glasses of chardonnay, well-to-do Beltway residents cling to their COVID-19 narrative where vaccines funded by the big pharmaceutical companies offer the only hope. In their world, no one — not even children — is safe without a vaccine. Anyone who dares deviate from the company line is dismissed as a backwater Trump-supporting conspiracist, even lifelong Democrats like me.
