Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 29

[ecosophia]

The semi-open posts  I've hosted here on the Covid-19 narrative, the inadequately tested experimental drugs for it, and the whole cascading mess surrounding them have continued to field a very high number of comments -- to understate the matter considerably! -- so I'm opening yet another space for discussion. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, as Canadian officials launch a campaign of reprisals against citizens who supported a peaceful protest against government policy, and the words "died suddenly" become the favorite media euphemism of our time, the floor is open for discussion.   

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect that the True Believers care less about COVID than they do about having some sort of True Belief and all it entails.

Before COVID, it was raging against Trump. Before that, it was worshiping Obama, and previous to that, hating Bush. It's true that the hysteria has ramped up - the Bush-loathing was relatively low-level and more grounded in actual policy reasons (at least it seemed to me), but the Obama-worship was less so (criticizing his political actions was deemed "racist"), and the Trump rage (and Clinton adoration) was beyond all reasonable levels of sanity (as observed by someone who didn't even like the man). Then Trump went (mostly) away, and the True Believer energy got transferred to COVID hysteria. In each case, though, there were similar elements: an enemy to hate and a politician or "expert" to worship, a set of virtues to be signaled, and an in-group/out-group dynamic: Blue Team, anti-Bush, Obama-loving, Hilary-adoring, Trump loathing, masking-vaxxing hiding-at-home people GOOD, Red team, Bush-voting, Obama-criticizing, Hillary-disliking, Trump-voting, not-buying-covid-hysteria people BAD. Members of Team Blue signaled their membership in the correct belief system in various ways, while railing with increasingly shrill levels of ever-expanding hysteria about the depravity of the caricatured "other".

So....

It wouldn't surprise me if the people in charge can manipulate the narrative to switch off COVID hysteria and switch on something else for the True Believers to obsess over and around which to build a temporary identity. What that will be and how it will work this time, I'm not sure - but I feel like once you see the pattern, it's pretty clear how it works.

[(Anonymous)]

How it works-- yes, there are patterns.

But it works as long as people remain on social media and watching TV-- and it works as long as they are alive enough to vote and shop and take some more pharmaceuticals.

Not that I'm cynical or anything.

Miss P