Revision as of 08:23, 9 December 2021

La mort faucha les autres, braves gens, braves gens
Et me fit grâce à moi c'est immoral et c'est comme ça

—Georges Brassens, La Mauvaise Herbe

Covid

Cough cough...

Covid is not sanitary. How could it be, at the same time that governments close hospital beds and silence leading scientists in the field? At the same time that they reinforce their oppressive arsenal and generalize massive control over populations.

Covid is political, and/or financial.

This makes for an interesting case study of how societies evolve and react to immediate threats, and of how people position themselves. To the famous question, "how would you have reacted to barbary if confronted to it?", now we know. We know if we would have followed orders from the governments, surrendered to intimidation, coercion, or if we would have resisted, and to which extent, discreetly among friends, voiced a public concern, taken to the streets... We just have to look at what we're doing. Make no mistake, the feeling of "doing the right thing", of "being in the true, collective action", of "belonging to the good society" or the even more famous "just following orders", has always been present. The ghettos in Nazi Germany were justified by the government, they were accepted by the rest of society. It's not like everybody was fully aware of the immorality and criminality of it: it was the accepted situation, thanks to propaganda, consensus, fait-accompli, it was the status quo. It was the same situation as for American citizens with respect to Japanese nationals held in concentration camps. It is the same situation as covid selective confinement of unvaccinated. So that you cannot contextualise your thoughts through examples, you will be said that such comparisons cannot be made, that they are outrageous and obscene. This is another question altogether, part of the so-called democratic illusion, à la Thiers: you cannot suspect a democracy of wrongdoing. In a sense, that makes state abuse even more insidious since there is an added layer of deception before it comes to brutal repression: moral condemnation.

Therefore, in the very same way that we feel we cannot understand what madness embraced the world in the 30s, it will similarly appear obscure to future generations how we could come to accept, in 2020s, to justify the immorality of the covid response, from "flattening the curve" to forced-quarantines, isolation, separation from family members, internment, continuous control by the police, firing people for refusing experimental inoculations, violent police repression of manifestations, including shooting at people, etc, etc.

Well, now we know how this is possible. It is happening as I write. So it makes for an interesting social experiment: how civilization collapses. Just look and see.

You can read about what I think of covid in these pages:

• Understanding covid, a blog post on 5 April (2021), initially the material of the current page.
• Halloween literature, on a twitter post alleging that children are craving for the vaccine.

A first fundamental constant is the spirit of the human being, of the individual, that is in opposition to the mainstream doxa, of the mass. This is the main trait of the hero, to think of his own, to refuse submission to what is wrong, absurd, unjust and to entertain the idea that one can be their own master. Even children understand that. In "Le Temple du Soleil", Tintin dares to imagine that a sanitary argument could be used as a pretext for a cover-up:

Tintin complotiste, dans «Le Temple du Soleil», il comprend qu'une épidémie permet de mettre en quarantaine une population qui se retrouve hors de portée immédiate de la police, de la justice, de toute sorte d'inquisition, mais pas de la sagacité et du courage du héros isolé.
Tintin the conspiracy theorist, in "Prisoners of the sun", understanding the quarantine is a trick to cut short all type of investigation. Translation below by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner. Nowadays, this fairly innocuous twist in a story for children, became forbidden grounds for most people. Discuss the possibility of the sanitary crisis being of a different character than medical, and see the reactions of disgust, fear, incomprehension, shock and disbelief this will provoke.

There is a not-so-small percentage (~20%) of people refusing the narrative. These correspond roughly to the Milgram fraction of those resisting coercion. They are those whom Brassens's describes in his masterpiece "La mauvaise herbe" ( "The weed"):

Many will however keep a low profile. It really takes people of historical and heroic proportions to stand up and fight openly.

Most people are, nevertheless, good people, who will participate more or less willingly only due to the innate trust and respect they have for authority.

That's why it is important for this Authority to justify itself and drapes its policy with all the appearance of what is respectable: law, ethic and science. This gave us some of the admirable pieces of propaganda, explaining to us that it is immoral to walk in the countryside, seek the contact of nature and beauty, nurture "non-essential" needs such as music and literature, hug your family members, respect the humanity of people, treat the sick and the elderly... All of this becomes secondary to "stay safe".

The footage below is from the Derbyshire police which, with drones, tracked people in the peak district to condemn their selfish and criminal behaviour: walking the dog there.

Non-essential... Victor Hugo:

Le beau est aussi utile que l'utile, plus peut-être.

Vonnegut:

Whatever happens, there'll always be the music.

The role of scientists is a particularly painful one in this process of reshuffling our values and putting "science" before everything else. This starts of course with medical doctors, who have forgotten about otherwise millennium-old wisdom and humility, Primum non nocere and the Hippocratic oath. Gilbert Deray, a nephrologist seen on all TV channels dispensing fearmongering, posted this child-abuse guilt on his social media [1]

Beyond medical doctors, I have witnessed countless times people whom I know are intelligent, creative and concerned about what is true and right, to express apathetic reactions to humanity being flushed down the gutter. John Baez on parking children in squares [2]:

Hossenfelder on unvaccinated (German) people [3]: "the only silver line is that the stupid people are more likely to die":

She means "silver lining", i.e., the good thing in an otherwise bad situation. From this happening by itself to the idea of boosting this only line of hope, there are a few steps only. This incredible comment would deserve a full consideration of its own. The exchange captured below in the comments of the thread, as one among many, is a particularly representative example of how people justify and legitimize this type of abject rhetoric: "you're too stupid and wrong to understand the subtleties".

Dehumanization: it's okay to be treated like an animal or an object, as long as this keeps you safe from covid. Not "safe" in general, just "safe from covid". This poor woman is not yet wrapped up in a card box and stored in a corner the time that her viral load disappears, though I wonder if that would make a difference regarding people's reaction to such a treatment [4]

Links

1. https://c19hcq.com exhaustive list of publications on a central question of covid's treatment.