New Catallaxy

Democracy is apparently the greatest threat to our way of life

This is from the comments to the vid which kind of explains what’s happening.

Okay, it’s really quite simple. The third dose increases immunity, so after the fourth dose you’ll be protected. Once 80% of the population has received the fifth dose, the restrictions can be relaxed as the sixth dose stops the virus from spreading. I am confident that the seventh dose will solve our problems and we’ll have no reason to fear the eighth dose. The clinical phase of the ninth dose will confirm that the antibodies remain stable after the tenth dose. The eleventh dose will insure that no new mutations will develop, so there is no longer any reason to criticize the twelfth dose.

What else is there to know?

TO WHICH MUST BE ADDED THESE: First this which goes with the above: Welcome to the end of democracy.

We bemoan autocracies in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and China but largely ignore the more subtle authoritarian trend in the West. Don’t expect a crudely effective dictatorship out of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: we may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the nosiest of dictatorships.

And then there’s this. Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent. Maybe perhaps, but all this is certainly true about the people who insist that you wear masks when wandering around the streets or going into shops.

Steve Kates

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23 responses to “Democracy is apparently the greatest threat to our way of life”

  1. Simon Morgan Avatar
    Simon Morgan

    I follow AwakenWithJP which is of course intended to be a satirical take on what’s going on in the States.

    The trouble is that it is America’s reality. The US now is Orwell’s nightmare writ large, so while you can still raise a smile with JP, the reality is just too dark for humour.

    11
  2. Plasmamortar Avatar
    Plasmamortar

    The problem with democracy is that people eventually realise that they can vote themselves ‘free money’.
    This eventually results in communism as the available parties compete over how much ‘free money’ they can promise the population…

    15
  3. Bruce Avatar
    Bruce

    “A government, which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.” –

    George Bernard Shaw, of all people.

    “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” –

    C. S. Lewis.

    14
  4. Miss Anthropist Avatar
    Miss Anthropist

    I seem to remember this was raised in a thread on here last year.
    Some little ditties were penned.

    4
  5. Maniac Avatar
    Maniac

    ‘Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent.’

    Yeah, most Leftists these days tend to be.

    11
  6. Pogria Avatar
    Pogria

    The Great Margaret Thatcher,

    “what happens when we run out of other peoples’ money?”

    7
  7. Pogria Avatar
    Pogria

    oops, I forgot to add, Mrs Thatcher was talking about Socialists.

    3
  8. bemused Avatar
    bemused

    ‘Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent.’

    Have you ever seen an ‘Anti-Fascist‘ not wearing a mask? Somewhat different to those insurrectionists .

    4
  9. Mother Lode Avatar
    Mother Lode

    ‘Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent.’

    I wonder if the actual bearing of the mask doesn’t contribute psychologically.

    For a start it would seem to lend a sense of anonymity so zealots feel they are able to get away with stuff. Further, the masks have been imbued with puritan righteousness and the wearer transformed.

    The maskless are not the same kind of people as them any more – they are de-humanised.

    7
  10. Mother Lode Avatar
    Mother Lode

    What worries me is that there has been a creeping trend to start seeing individual rights not as something to enjoy yourself, but as something you are given in order to use them to serve others.

    If you have the right to free speech, that does not mean you’re allowed to say something that another person may not like. It means you the virtue of having the choice to say something they may not like, but don’t.

    The vaccines are much the same. They are stuck with the fact that they cannot mandate a vaccine, but as far as they are concerned that is all the more reason for people to get it.

    Let’s gloss over the ridiculous idea that somehow vaccines don’t work on the person who is vaccinated, but exerts protection instead on everybody else around them.

    With these vaccines therefore it is incumbent upon people regardless of what they would choose for themselves to instead dedicate themselves to what they are told everybody else wants. But how do we know what everybody else wants? Do you go around and ask them individually? Or are there such an elevated individuals in newspaper offices and sitting behind government desks who will tell us what they all think?

    I think we all know the answer to that.

    6
  11. bemused Avatar
    bemused

    A federal judge on Thursday ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release Pfizer vaccine data within approximately eight months after the agency had asked for 75 years to fully comply with an extensive public records request.

    Why do I have this feeling that there’s going to be a tragic fire at the FDA and all the records will be destroyed?

    12
  12. Kneel Avatar
    Kneel

    “What worries me is that there has been a creeping trend to start seeing individual rights not as something to enjoy yourself, but as something you are given in order to use them to serve others.”

    They have redefined words – again.

    “Right” is supposed to mean “cannot be denied without due process”. If, as per UN Universal Declaration of Human rights, I have the right to earn a living and the right to bodily autonomy, then these cannot be removed from me without due process – that is, without a formal process against me as an individual, where the government presents a case for doing so to a court of law, I am allowed to present arguments against it, and an independent arbiter (the judiciary) makes a determination as to who has the better argument based on the law as written and previous precedent. And yet I have been forced to choose between these two “rights”, not as an individual after due process, but simply because I am a resident in this jurisdiction.

    In other words, they are saying that these are not rights as such, but rather privileges which can be rescinded at the whim of those in power. And as I have noted before, I have a reply in writing from the HRC indicating that they do not have the power to prevent a state government from breaching an international agreement lawfully made by the federal government, and are apparently not even interested in making a determination as to whether or not my human rights have been breached.

    Is anyone surprised that this may lead some to conclude that, since peaceful civil disobedience has also failed to remedy this situation, violence may – perhaps even must – ensue? I would certainly discourage violence for this – indeed, at all times and for all reasons – but would note that the stress due to the actions taken against me and others is of such magnitude, and is so far out of kilter with our view of ourselves as a country, that it seems violence of one form or another is inevitable if such pernicious and arguably illegal actions continue.

    11
  13. Crossie Avatar
    Crossie

    The trouble is that it is America’s reality. The US now is Orwell’s nightmare writ large, so while you can still raise a smile with JP, the reality is just too dark for humour.

    This also our reality and even more so.

    9
  14. Crossie Avatar
    Crossie

    With these vaccines therefore it is incumbent upon people regardless of what they would choose for themselves to instead dedicate themselves to what they are told everybody else wants. But how do we know what everybody else wants? Do you go around and ask them individually? Or are there such an elevated individuals in newspaper offices and sitting behind government desks who will tell us what they all think?

    This has similarities to a religious cult, the individual must be suppressed for the good of the cult. Splitters must be punished and not permitted to escape. Before anybody says just like Judeo-Christianity, not so, that God endowed people with free will. Our governments insist on exercising that free will for us, they see themselves as omnipotent.

    8
  15. Damon Avatar
    Damon

    American politicians realise that an armed population represents a real threat to their power, and usually do not overplay their hand. Biden and the Democrats are on the verge of making such a mistake.

    10
  16. HT Avatar
    HT

    I always prided myself on being a gentleman. Mask Nazis have changed all that; after almost 18 months I have moved from “Thankyou for your concern about my wellbeing but I am medically exempt” to a full on “fuck-off and mind your own business”. My kids want me to wear to one of those medical exemption badges because they’re worried about my change of demeanour, but I just see those badges as an alternate ?? , and that just riles me up more.

    11
  17. Roger Avatar
    Roger

    And then there’s this. Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent.

    The relative anonymity a mask provides would facilitate such behaviours.

    8
  18. Roger W Avatar
    Roger W

    Read the Declaration of Independence again.
    Sometimes rebellion is the only solution.

    7
  19. HT Avatar
    HT

    My kids want me to wear to one of those medical exemption badges because they’re worried about my change of demeanour, but I just see those badges as an alternate ?? , and that just riles me up more.

    Didn’t realise an emoji slipped in there. I see the “I’m exempt” badges as an alternate Yellow Star of David, marking me out as othered.

    8
  20. Botswana O'Hooligan Avatar
    Botswana O’Hooligan

    Reminiscing in the main on behalf of Victorians, one could go fishing at any time in the good old Soviet Union without let or hindrance, so welcome to a Soviet Union on steroids folks. We deserve all we get with no excuses for a majority of us voted them into power.

    4
  21. Kneel Avatar
    Kneel

    “I see the “I’m exempt” badges as an alternate Yellow Star of David, marking me out as othered.”

    Wear a yellow star with “Medically Exempt” on it – your lack of a mask already marks you as “othered” anyway, so you may as well own it and make a point. Not that half of the Karens would even see the connection anyway…

    7
  22. HT Avatar
    HT

    Wear a yellow star with “Medically Exempt” on it – your lack of a mask already marks you as “othered” anyway, so you may as well own it and make a point. Not that half of the Karens would even see the connection anyway…

    Wouldn’t that be cultural appropriation? …sigh… What a messed up world for a conservative/ libertarian.

    1
  23. Winston Smith Avatar
    Winston Smith

    HT:

    Wouldn’t that be cultural appropriation? …sigh… What a messed up world for a conservative/ libertarian.

    I don’t really care about Cultural Appropriation – see my Gravatar.
    If it fits, I will wear it.

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