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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Do I really need to beat my usual drum again. Is the elephant in the room going to be unaddressed. Okay then...

Remember when governments across the formerly liberal democratic west put their entire populations under home imprisonment? Shut schools, workplaces, international travel, recreation, and places of workship? Brutally attacked even the most mild-mannered of protests? Implemented sophisticated schemes to segregate the population by whether they have taken a series of injections assigned to them by the government? Whipped up hatred of those who disagreed with any of this? Conspired with big tech to censor voiced dissent online, when they didn't just go straight to arresting people for facebook posts instead?

The three things you've listed above are rounding errors compared to this.

Don't imprison the entire population was a principle so fundamental that, at least in the Anglosphere, it dates back to the middle ages with Habeas Corpus. The load-bearing walls for civilization have already been dismantled. Detente in the culture war is over. Liberal democracy has been replaced with "the government makes you wear a seatbelt, so it can do whatever the fuck it wants, and beat the shit out of anyone who disagrees". I don't see a path to putting the walls back up at present, because it's hardly like our current leaders are ever going to admit to committing crimes against humanity and rebuke their past policy as the unthinkable actions they were.

Don't imprison the entire population was a principle so fundamental that, at least in the Anglosphere, it dates back to the middle ages with Habeas Corpus.

Habeas corpus was suspended during the American Civil War. It was reinstated again once the war was over, and the US did not become a tyrannical dictatorship. Like Covid, it really was a once-in-a-generation emergency, after which things returned to normal.

Covid was not a once in a generation emergency. The exact event was a once in a generation thing, but events of similar severity can happen any time.

Not to mention the people (in the US) who most loudly complain about needing to have a job to have health insurance then instantly going to bat for the OSHA-enabled vaccine mandate, saying “Look, the government isn’t forcing you to get the vaccine! You’ll only lose your job if you don’t get it!” I gladly got the vaccines and the boosters, and this is still one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in US culture. I’m never forgetting it, and it really made me skeptical that any of those people care about causes beyond how much they enable their authoritarian personalities.

Are you completely certain that the government was doing most of the work of locking people down? From my perspective. It all started as a grassroots sort of thing, the most vocal people decided that they wanted to be locked down and didn't want to be exposed to the virus, or expose people they thought didn't want to be exposed. It became very clear, very early on, that any company or government institution that didn't fall in line with this policy would face massive social sanctions, callouts on social media, accusations of violence and racism ("you're literally killing people and people of color are the most vulnerable"), etc from these most vocal proponents of lockdown. That was my perspective from leftist-city USA, that the government and everyone else was just doing what they were pressured to do. I don't know if that's true everywhere, though.

That makes it worse - 50% of the population put the other 50% [adjust numbers as necessary] under home arrest imprisonment...

I agree it was terrible. I don't necessarily think either is worse, but I personally can't stand social shaming used to enforce policies, which is the MO of the left.

Are you completely certain that the government was doing most of the work of locking people down?

Speaking for my own locale, yes, I am 100% certain that most of the work was done by the government. On March 20, 2020, I was out for a fish fry with friends and literally no one gave a shit about Covid. The restaurant was packed. This was after the United States had implemented international flight restrictions, there were already tens of thousands of confirmed cases in the United States (meaning there were obviously many more) and there was no obvious evidence that anyone cared at all. Nonetheless, by Monday, our governor had issued a stay-at-home order.

I don't think lockdownism was organic at all.

What was the enforcement for the stay at home order? Where I was, I still drove around, took walks outside on roads and in public parks, went to the supermarket, etc. No one was threatening to stop me from doing these things, and I could have easily just gone and gotten together with people if I wanted to, gone to people's houses, met them outside in public places. Idk, maybe I was just lucky and the police never stopped me to give me a ticket for breaking lockdown, but I don't think that was the case. No one seemed worried about such things at all.

I got thrown out of parks, by armed police officers, twice, in Essex County, NJ.

This "lockdown didn't happen" revisionism is tiresome.

All restaurants and most businesses were fully closed. I am not aware of any that attempted to test legal enforcement

(https://evers.wi.gov/Documents/COVID19/EMO12-SaferAtHome.pdf):

Outdoor activity. To engage in outdoor activity, including visiting public and state parks, provided individuals comply with Social Distancing Requirements as defined below. Such activities include, by way of example and without limitation, walking, biking, hiking, or running. Individuals may not engage in team or contact sports such as by way of example and without limitation, basketball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, or football, as these activities do not comply with Social Distancing Requirements. Playgrounds are closed.

I'm getting incredibly angry as I read back through what these fuckers deigned to be the legitimate purview of government regulation. That I could probably get away with the sin of standing close to someone outside my home because the government doesn't quite the resources to stop me is some small comfort, but on the whole I think @Tophattingson is absolutely correct that Western governments obliterated the normal understanding of the social contract with these sorts of orders.

This was also my experience.

Edit: in Colorado. I think we were pretty chill about the whole ordeal. I just went about my life normally and I don’t think anything that I did was even ever against any certain new rule. There was a mask mandate I guess and restrictions on the number of people in an establishment, but other than that really not much changed.

We were encouraged to get out and get fresh air, for example. To go to parks, go hiking, things like this. There were never any outdoor mask requirements either.

Colorado very much mandated closure of so-called non-essential businesses which killed more than a few smaller ones. Mostly entertainment type venues since the order carved out basically every job that had any sort of political constituency. For the most part though the Governor left the political liability of lockdowns to county governments. The mayor of Denver initially wanted to shutdown liquor stores but quickly reversed course after panic buying caused some trouble.

No one seemed worried about such things at all.

Were where you places that you visited as crowded as before the corona?

If they were, then for at least your locale, you are correct.

If they weren't, however, the question arises why? Is it due to people being afraid of punishment, or due to them independently coming to the same conclusion as the lawmakers.

Are you completely certain that the government was doing most of the work of locking people down?

Yes.

If I want to visit a friend/business and they don't want me there, then that's fine. You can set whatever standards you want for yourself, and I'll accept them even if I don't agree.

If I want to visit a friend/business and the government threatens to imprison or fine me for it, then it's a lockdown.

Where I was, anyway, (northeastern US) I don't think the government was threatening to imprison for such things. I could be wrong, but I remember it all being advisories, but people were still free to do whatever they wanted. I know Australia and China had intense lockdowns imposed, but how many other places did? Were there any places in the US that took that approach?

I'm in Canada, and the local nonessential business restrictions/closures and gathering limits (as low as zero people allowed) were all enforced by fines in the $1k-$100k range, with most being $2800 for individuals.

A quick google shows similar laws in place in the US.

I am extremely anti-lockdown but I also don’t see any problem with locking down the population for the right virus.

I think most people have a freedom + utilitarian framework where you pick freedom as much as possible.

I think prior drug wars were a failure but I think fentanyl might just be bad enough for some draconian measures. We probably have 60-70K excess deaths per year right now due to fentanyl and not general deaths of despair.

Fentanyl is a symptom of the drug wars. If people could buy pure oxycodone pills from reputable companies at the drug store no one would be buying counterfeit fentanyl pills from the cartels

I am extremely anti-lockdown but I also don’t see any problem with locking down the population for the right virus.

Well the failure mode of this attitude should be obvious (because we lived through it): if you say "no population level mass incarceration EXCEPT for the right virus" then that just incentives neurotic hypochondriac safetyists to hysterically propagandise that a virus barely worse than the common cold IS the right virus.

And then we go back to playing the ol' "Redefine words out from under people" shuffle, where if you lose, you get locked up in isolation for 2 years while the government folks keep on partying (see: Boris Johnson's "Partygate", Obama's birthday garden fetê, etc.)

Johnson was ousted from power because of Partygate, what more could you ask for?

What more could I ask for? In the UK, the maximum penalty for falsely imprisoning someone is 20 years. The government has, collectively, ~210,000,000 counts of false imprisonment to answer for. So the most I could ask for is Boris being imprisoned approximately until the sun explodes.

Well the failure mode of this attitude should be obvious (because we lived through it): if you say "no population level mass incarceration EXCEPT for the right virus" then that just incentives neurotic hypochondriac safetyists to hysterically propagandise that a virus barely worse than the common cold IS the right virus.

It is also worth to note that prior to COVID, the experts went against lockdowns as effective epidemiologic measure. So there was no prior consensus to lock down the whole population for a virus unlike let's say other scenarios such as evacuation due to natural catastrophe or martial law during war. This means that in theory any threat can lead to lockdowns as the consensus can shift in matter of days.

It is also worth to note that prior to COVID, the experts went against lockdowns as effective epidemiologic measure.

Well, maybe, but I'm cynical enough to believe that this was also "Massage the science until it agrees with the policy we already wanted to do in the first place": namely, economic growth be-all-end-all-ism. The politicos didn't want a hypothetical pandemic interfering with their Line Going Up. It's only in the actual advent of a pandemic that the safetyists came out of the woodwork and demanded the opposite prescription. But in both cases the "scientific consensus" was more a function of political climate than actual data, because the scientists who say what the powers that be want to hear are the ones who get funding / airtime / the ear of the Premier.

It's only in the actual advent of a pandemic that the safetyists came out of the woodwork and demanded the opposite prescription.

Then we should be able to find this woodwork that they came out of. I've looked for it before. It ain't there. There's no segment of the public health community that, prior to 2020, thought imprisoning the entire population of a country in their own homes in the long-term was a suitable response to anything.

Don't imprison the entire population was a principle so fundamental that...

Was it? I think the principle debate here would be over whether it is ever acceptable for the government to restrict movement in the interest of safety. Would you bite the bullet and say that it is never okay, even if doing so would avert a dire outcome?

"Those who would give up essential Liberty".. etc?

I would literally say never and it is worth spending millions if not billions of lives to make sure the answer is never.

This is what we claimed to fight for in all those wars... freedom. If the state sets itself up against the freedom of the citizenry then it has abandoned every charge it ever held, betrayed all our dead, declared itself an enemy of the human race as it seeks to reduce the human to merely an expendable resource of the regime... and unlimited violence is justified to bring about its end as such.

A free person responds to those who'd chain them with violence. A feral animal has this much dignity. one who wouldn't is neither free, is surrendering their personhood, and is barely even an animal anymore, they have accepted being a mere symbiote, a cell, of an alien entity who cares not for them.

Conversely, I've always interpreted coordination around medical emergencies, such as lockdowns, as one of the basic reasons to have a government to begin with.

Covid was not an emergency and protecting us from mentally ill people dragging the rest of society along with their weird agenda, no matter the cost, is one of the core functions of government under the current iteration of the social contract. If the government instead acquiesced to these weirdos then the social contract is violated and the government has forfeited the Mandate of Heaven.

Covid was not an emergency

What about hospitals overflowing, not enough ventilators, etc.?

These were fake news items. Hospitals didn’t go over capacity and ventilators were known not to be the best treatment option.

Maybe in India and Brazil, not AFAIK in the US, certainly not in Europe.

There was always talk of these things as being just around the next corner, happening any minute now, if we do not pull all the stops and do everything now. Same narrative as with climate change. Problems first exaggerated and then extrapolated to justify maximalist demands for whatever measures. Not necessarily because anyone likes the measures, but these things seem to take on dynamics of their own in interactions between public, politics and media.

There was also the argument "people don't understand exponential growth. If it goes to half capacity it could easily go to full capacity tomorrow".

Turns out that people did understand exponential growth.

Those who proclaim "live free or die" should really decide which one they are, because at this moment most of them are neither dead nor free, not in the "you are only free when you can choose anything, not just anything that conveniently aligned with what the state is fine with you doing" meaning.

Otherwise what is this, a quantum superposition "until observed by the state" or something?

It's posturing or signalling. Useful to rally like-minded people to yourself, but not literally the intended course of action. But your question was rhetorical, wasn't it?

Oh it's simple, I'm just not going to obey.

I'll do whatever a free man does and if the State obstructs me I'll take any means of circumventing their tyranny up and including destroying the State if that's expedient.

But most of the time, forgery, piracy and contraband are enough. Killing the agents of tyranny is fun to boast about but it's never been a reliable means of securing freedom unless you have overwhelming firepower.

I'm just not going to obey. To the death.

Is that hypothetical or have you actually been doing any of these things?

Nice try feds.

Detente in the culture war is over.

The ents have become to move, classes that had no interest in politics prior have found themselves forced to participate and they aren't happy about it.

Are you ready to deal with the Amish having a voting bloc?

Yes. Pennsylvania politics can’t really get worse right now.

I'd vote for Patriarch Jeb over Oz or Fettermen. He'd I'd know would be for solar power.

I for one welcome our new Anabaptist overlords. ;)

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