Open (more or less) Post on Covid

Last week's post here titled A Hypothesis has now gotten more comments than any other entry on this journal -- more, in fact, than all but a handful of posts on any of my blogs, ever. No, I don't think it's because my entry was the most brilliant thing ever written. I think it's because a very, very large number of people want to be able to talk over their worries about the Covid-19 situation, and especially the vaccines being pushed so heavily by governments and the medical industry just now, without having to face a constant barrage of splaining. 

Splaining? I think most people now have heard of "mansplaining," the habit some men have of telling women what to think, using patronizing tones and language. A fair number of men have started to talk about "womansplaining," in turn, because a significant number of women have picked up the same habit, and use it on men who disagree with certain ideological stances today's privileged feminists embrace. It's hardly limited to gender issues, though; watch the way that self-proclaimed experts online take on exactly the same tone of self-satisfied smugness as they set out their opinions as absolute truth, and you'll recognize the need for a more general label. To my mind, "splaining" provides that label. 

The Covid-19 situation is rife with splaining. In fact, it's hard to find anything else just now. On the one hand, we've got the people who insist at the top of their lungs that whatever the medical industry and its paid politicians happen to be saying this week is the undeniable truth. On the other hand we've got the people who insist at the top of their lungs that the latest paranoiac claims of conspiracy culture this week are the undeniable truth. The two of them work so enthusiastically in concert to drown out any more nuanced discussion of this issue -- and of course many others -- that I've suspected more than once that the establishment goes out of its way to encourage conspiracy culture, for the same reason that the totalitarian government in George Orwell's 1984 encouraged a fake resistance movement:  to distract potential dissidents and keep them from doing anything that would actually harm the regime. 

Be that as it may, while there's a demand for it, I'm going to host a weekly open post for discussion of the Covid-19 vaccine situation. Comments will be strictly moderated. In particular, I will be deleting all comments that attempt to argue for the medical industry's party line, or link to sites that do so -- there are hundreds of thousands of places online where people can read about that if they want to.  I will also be deleting all comments that attempt to argue that Covid-19 and the vaccines are the product of a deliberate, malign conspiracy on the part of some villainous group or other, or link to sites that do this -- there are tens of thousands of places online where that's the subject of discussion. The hundreds of people who posted here last week wanted to talk about the possibility that what's behind the current mess is the ordinary incompetence, arrogance, and corruption that is so rife in modern industrial society, especially (though of course not only) in its political systems and its medical and pharmaceutical industries. They wanted to talk about the possibility that these factors are bringing about an avoidable disaster, while politicians and industry flacks scramble around frantically trying to pretend that nothing is wrong -- and they wanted to do it without facing an endless, dreary torrent of splaining from those who can't stand the thought that someone might disagree with their preferred party line. 

I won't be responding to comments here, by and large. This is for you, my readers, to talk among yourselves and share data points that you've picked up in your own lives -- the sort of thing the corporate media won't talk about. Have at it. 

A follow-up comment:  in the three hours since I posted this I've already had to delete two comments that attempted to splain. One of them was pushing the conventional wisdom, one of them was pushing a conspiracy theory. Both have been deleted. All further attempts to do the same thing will suffer the same fate. There are thousands of online venues where people can push those viewpoints to their hearts' content. This open post is not one of them. Please abide by this or I will start banning people permanently.

In the meantime, certain words seem appropriate for those who want to use the dead hand of rigid ideology to stifle living conversation: 

"Get out, you old Wight! Vanish in the sunlight!
Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,
Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!
Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!
Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,
Where gates stand forever shut, till the world is mended."