It was predicted about a year or two ago that once negative side effects of the mass-mRNA rollouts started to crop up, that many who coerced and scared the masses into taking them would revert to the stance of ‘well no one FORCED you to take them’. Not that they are acknowledging that any negative effects have been caused by the injections – that is not allowed to even be discussed. (And if it is, it is always long-covid or poor lifestyles that are to blame). This stance is to normalize once again the new social contract that the West has now entered (much of the East was already under this type of social contract). That is, public acceptance has been proven, via mandates, that we do not care about fundamental human rights of mobility and the self – we are fine with giving those up, and begging to have those returned to us as privileges so long as we obey and follow along with whatever rules are set out for us – logical or not. We have not and will not become China, but we essentially voted to their authoritarian style of rule by accepting mandates so willingly. You can argue that the mandates are all but gone now, but this is not the point. The point is the system has been set up, tested, and complied with by a general population who doesn’t know or care that giving up these rights is never warranted – especially during ‘emergencies’. As Maajid Nawaz pointed out last year – altering this social contract should not be determined by the State, and especially not in a perpetual emergency status.
Maybe you are part of the majority that wants/wanted the governments to crack down on non-compliance, have police arrest someone for walking alone in a forest, or swimming in a lake, or sitting alone on a park bench when it was ‘against the rules’. Maybe this ‘worst pandemic of our lifetime’ had you wanting to be a vigilante enforcer and yell at someone without a mask, or call police when you saw someone visiting when they shouldn’t. The point is with the mandates of the last 3 years, that, again, they set up and built infrastructure to monitor and control your movement during times of ‘emergencies’ while you are fearful, and in agreement with the government, so that the next time(s), even if more of the public starts speaking out or rejecting the restrictions, there will be no chance to opt out. (I.e. the laws are always made and justified for issues you agree with, so that later they can be used for things you may disagree with – the same way they justify reducing free speech by calling everything hate speech).
Any questioning or analysis of this fundamental shift leads to just what they desire – people fighting amongst themselves, divided – the classic propaganda101 tactic for any population control. Any questioning of whether relinquishing fundamental rights to be turned in to privileges with strings attached immediately devolves into ‘trust the science!’ ‘do you want people to die?’ ‘I have long Covid!’ ‘Trust your government’ or ‘how about that weather?’ The point is not to argue or debate the scary thing the government and media are telling you to fear, but rather what they using that fear for and what they are justifying changing. Mandates may be almost gone now, but we have proven that we will give them up easily under coercion and fear. I doubt they will go as harsh with future mandates. Once they have central bank digital currencies (controllable money) ironed out, compliance with those systems will seem like an easier version of outright lockdowns or travel restrictions.
Trudeau took his turn recently to say ‘no one ever forced you’. This is technically-true – you will be fired, excluded from movement, excluded from public spaces and venues, shamed, denied treatment, and in some places fined - you know, the basics of life and all. But no one forced you. That is text-book childish coercion on the level of denying kids presents at Christmas – yet the majority not only went along, but encouraged it. I was a bit surprised that no one I knew commented on the childish coercion (or threats) used by almost all leaders. A good summary here shows how easily people fall for outright threats and convince themselves they are really just ‘incentives’. These tactics are all well described in the ‘nudge’ theories under which most Western democracies operate. The word ‘nudge’ is simply a lighter-sounding euphemism for outright propaganda – guiding the bewildered herd to behave in a way for their own good. And who determines the parameters of ‘for their own good’?
How many people do you know over 40 even had an inkling to posit the question Maajid Nawaz did (link above) about basic rights? Myself, I found the same low proportion – only 1 in 20 or at most 1 in 10 had an instinctive reaction that this was fundamentally wrong. This is made all the more ludicrous and illogical given the ‘revelation’ many months ago that the jabs do nothing to stop transmission or infection. You most likely had the same angry conversations as I did – comparing the shots to the measles or polio vaccines. Those were/are ‘sterilizing’ vaccines – they stop the virus itself. (Regardless your stance on any and all vaccine shots). The initial trials of the Covid19 shots did not claim or test for this, only that it might reduce symptoms. Still the fearful public treated them like the polio or measles vaccines. Keep in mind those diseases kill younger people at a rate hundreds of times higher than Covid19. But that’s old science, handily erased along with many other definitions of ‘science’ pre-2020, yet the majority of adults all around me seemed fine with it. Personally, we had close friends of 30 years state to our face ‘we cannot be seen with you’ early in the pandemic because they had their jabs and we hadn’t yet. Within a year they chose to restart our visits never thinking they were in the wrong with that stance. I feel this was a well-timed tactic to capture enough of the older populations’ trust in sterilizing vaccines, so as to use that influence to transfer the same sentiment to the Covid shots.
Keep in mind that I am not stating here that any side is 100% correct and all others are wrong. What is needed is discussion – talking about what is happening without resorting to name-calling or shaming. Just to ask any question has been taboo for almost three years now. An example topic with zero discussion: how can the shots have ‘saved millions of lives’ while simultaneously we have almost all Western nations seeing continued, 10-20% EXCESS mortality across all ages [and here] that is not caused by Covid? Rough figures – “The West”, Europe, USA, Canada, Australia etc. total around 1 billion people. Just under 1% of most populations die each year, so that’s 10 million per year for “The West” (worldwide it is around 70 million deaths out of 8 billion people, or 0.9%). Per government statistics (links above), mortality in the West has been elevated approximately 15% for two years. That’s an extra 1.5 million dead per year, or 3 million over two years and it does not appear to be slowing. And yet in that same period the shots have saved millions? Any discussion?
Recall that the mandates didn’t get lifted because any government anywhere acknowledged that the logic of them was flawed. That is, they didn’t suddenly admit that the shots did not stop infection or transmission, therefore mandatory shots and passports for everyday access to life (public events, restaurants, keeping your job etc.) are invalid. (Forget that even if they did stop infection or transmission, democratic societies should not limit liberties based on medical interventions). They just kept changing their reasoning. From ‘we won’t mandate shots due to obvious civil liberty issues’, to ‘we’re mandating them since it will stop the pandemic’ to ‘they’re still mandated because even though you’ll still get it and spread it, mandates will stop the hospitals from being overwhelmed’. None of these positions were ever provable – and yet they kept the mandates. The common term for this tactic is obviously ‘moving the goal posts’ – but no one recognized it. In places like Israel – they kept the mandates going even requiring three or four shots to maintain your passport ‘up to date’. Yes, the mandates mostly got dropped over time in most places, but there was zero discussion on why they were needed in the first place, and only fear and coercion were given as explanations. Remember you were a ‘science denier’ if you even questioned the illogical mandates.
This was humour a year or two ago yet we showed as a society that we mainly went along with it or didn’t care:
The adults among us have given this as normal now for our kids. In this case for Trudeau, his visit to keep the University crowds convinced probably worked, but highlights the future ‘managerial class’ and their willingness to go along. The students in the audience are described as ‘nodding along in agreement’ with his comments about not forcing anyone. Meanwhile the livestream comments are disagreeing completely. It’s obvious it’s because the livestream commenters are racist and far right, and the students are enlightened and fair. This is a perfect example of the future leader classes in training. They see no problem with one entity controlling the media, laws, policing, and the courts, and even what is true information. In saying misinformation is spread by people ‘who don’t know any better’, Trudeau is again saying ‘trust your government – we will decide what information is true’. How about when one day that comes up right in front of you when you disagree with a government mandate or ‘truth’, and your 22 year old university child tells you something that goes against what you believe or know ‘because the government said so’? I agree mostly with the adage that more than 85% of people in any society or group just want to be told what to do and how to act to just get along. It’s a proportion in human nature dating back to our instinct to survive. I just hoped that when ‘they’ started a campaign to make use of this via ‘nudge tactics’, that more adults would recognize it and discuss the application of it rather than just lining up to comply and finger point non-compliers.
They will gradually continue to remove any independent thoughts and/or ability of you or your children to form their own opinion. And who decides mis/dis information? The government. Who decided this for the past thousands of years? Society and people? ‘Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see’ is an adage from many decades ago, before television, and obviously before social media, AI, ChatGP, ‘deepfakes’ or any of that. And suddenly within the last three years we need a protective Daddy government to tell us what the truth is, and what dis- and mis-information is? Don’t think or analyze, just obey? This is what the University classes are about – you can discuss how you feel about something, but you can’t debate it if the government tells you not to. This is the opposite of critical thinking – the closest skill University types can obtain (until a few years ago) that almost comes close to ‘street smarts’ – the ability to detect BS when one sees it. And again this doesn’t mean to prove any one opinion is 100% correct and all others wrong – the point is being allowed to question and discuss without being labelled some derogatory term because you have been associated with government-decreed mis or disinformation. I once came close to trying to get an opinion from a colleague about the Canadian trucker convoy’s protest against mandates (not against the shots, against the mandates). A discussion almost occurred until they resorted to the official position: “but I saw a Swastika at the protest rally”. That was a close one. This person almost had to have an opinion but was saved by a piece of propaganda that allowed him to be on the right side.
And that’s the reason universities had some of the most strict mandates (even to this day some still require boosters for a demographic that have little to no risk from C19). Adults over 40 are not in this new societal plan. The majority of those will go along anyway out of fear or simple financial stability.
How about you? In your age group, what percentage of people have had any discussions about these topics? Are most of the opinion ‘well the mandates are gone so we are all good now right?’ Like something similar but with more carrot less stick isn’t just around the corner? And what about any other topic that comes up in the news? What percentage of people you know parrot the official position in the media/government (one in the same) versus those who go back to first principles to form their opinion? That is, how many around you have street smarts or a good BS detector?
Myself, I don’t care either way. I just miss confrontational discussion about such issues with those who use their BS detectors. Usually it results in people checking their BS detectors against others’, but now it ends quickly once the media/government position is parroted and agreed upon. Trust the experts, right?
Try a simple test. Review these quotes (supposedly) from H.L. Mencken, a political critic from a century ago, and see if any of these still ring true or not. Has nothing has changed except for our collective ignorance? E.g.: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Will end this one off with a few statements from prominent ‘leaders’ who probably all feel they ‘never forced anyone to get the shots’.
Between the already-indoctrinated (in EVERY “next big thing”) young people coming up in our universities & the “COVID-kids” who have suffered irreparable emotional harm from all the “mandates”, there is MUCH to fear in our future “leaders”