The extraordinary turmoil of the last three years, on the surface, is ebbing away. But the undercurrents are as strong as ever, dragging us further away from the dignity that used to be inherent in our daily lives, our encounters with others, our institutions, our nations.
Like the ticky-tacky crosswalk cop, people should have tuned out the Covid “experts” and politicians from the beginning and instead trusted their own observations and common sense. Instead of heavy-handed, top-down, theatrical top-down mitigation measures, society would have been far better off if people had been allowed to live normally. The experts’ advice and government mitigation measures were—and are— nagging, nugatory and negative.
One might suppose it would be top headlines that the man who crafted the Covid response for the world was merely using this as the lever to reverse 12,000 years of human history. Indeed in that sense, “going medieval” is a mere step in a long road back. Forget the Constitution. Forget the Enlightenment. Forget even the golden age of the Roman Empire. Fauci wants to take us back long before there are any actual historical records: a conjectural Rousseauian state of nature where we lived by foraging for food around us and nothing more.
Stimulant brands for ADHD, such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, or Vyvanse rank at the top of the best-selling lists of medications for children. Indeed, the American dream may play a significant role in the proliferation of such cognitive enhancers in the US, but the rush for the magic pills crosses national borders. In fact, the ‘semi-final’ countries that are currently ‘winning’ the Ritalin Olympics, according to the International Narcotics Control Board, are: Iceland, Israel, Canada, and Holland.
Are We Medicating Millions of ADHD Children without Scientific Justification? Read More
The precautionary principle uses the worst-case scenario, rather than the most probable scenario, as a basis for creating policies. And as we’ve seen with Covid, people often end up confusing the two. Such policies are blunt and brutish. They require extreme societal disruptions that, over time, may cause more harm than they prevent.
Danger, Caution Ahead: Zeb Jamrozik and Mark Changizi Read More
So much needs to be rebuilt after the last three years, but among the needs are serious intellectual communities. The colleges and universities have, for the most part, been taken over or smashed. The major media is captured. Our companies are forced into an obsequious stance. Our previous networks have been shattered. For lovers of freedom, we’ve experienced something of a diaspora.
People no longer have an emotional connection while speaking when wearing masks. And we can no longer understand each other’s speech. A venue full of masked people is a place lacking in humanity. It is an artificial world based on virtue-signaling and the elevation of appearance over reality, rather than actual human connection.
There was a coup d’état in this country that presented itself under the innocuous banner of “public health.” Our country’s most powerful forces – including information centers, unelected officials, and multinational corporations – worked together to unravel the protections of the Constitution. Among them was the longstanding precedent of the right to travel and its replacement by tyrannical house arrests.
It’s pretty hard to laugh when you’ve been inoculated with fear and isolation. Paralyzing gaslighting was the starting point. But the constant and continuing drumbeat of fear and necessary isolation transcend simple gaslighting. Fear and isolation were beneath the plunger being pushed down hard in the first needle forcibly stabbed into the world’s arms. And, that original fear-and-isolation inoculation of stress provided the opportunity for more tangible inoculations. Denial of natural immunity amplified any justification for, if not providing an outright blessing on many of these outrages.
Gabrielle Bauer joins Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of Brownstone Institute for an interview about her new book, Blindsight Is 2020: Reflections on Covid Policies from Dissident Scientists, Philosophers, Artists, and More
Blindsight Is 2020: Gabrielle Bauer reports on the resistance with Jeffrey Tucker Read More
All signs indicate that the U.S. and other world governments want to expand the reach and control of the globalized industrial food system, further concentrating power in the largest Big Food corporations. Governments around the world are using environmental goals to forcibly shut down small farms as they promote dependence on industrial technologies and factory foods that could make climate change and other environmental problems worse.
As Desmet explains in the book, every totalitarian regime begins with a period of mass formation. Into this tense and volatile mass steps an autocratic government and voilà, the totalitarian state clicks into place. The architects of the new regime don’t go around shouting, “I am evil.” They often believe, to the bitter end, they are doing the right thing.
