Out of synch with the Age

Rage: magma unable to escape

How did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of international travel, a 40% job loss among people earning less than $40K per year, devastation of every economic sector, mass confusion and demoralization, a complete ignoring of all fundamental rights and liberties, not to mention the mass confiscation of private property with forced closures of millions of businesses?

Whatever the answer, it’s got to be a bizarre tale.

...

"Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people – family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations – interact. What she discovered was that school kids come in contact with about 140 people a day, more than any other group. Based on that finding, her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people, 5,000 would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed."

Laura’s name appears on the foundational paper arguing for lockdowns and forced human separation. That paper is Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza (2006). It set out a model for forced separation and applied it with good results backwards in time to 1957. They conclude with a chilling call for what amounts to a totalitarian lockdown, all stated very matter-of-factly.

"Implementation of social distancing strategies is challenging. They likely must be imposed for the duration of the local epidemic and possibly until a strain-specific vaccine is developed and distributed. If compliance with the strategy is high over this period, an epidemic within a community can be averted. However, if neighboring communities do not also use these interventions, infected neighbors will continue to introduce influenza and prolong the local epidemic, albeit at a depressed level more easily accommodated by healthcare systems."

In other words, it was a high-school science experiment that eventually became law of the land, and through a circuitous route propelled not by science but politics.

[link to www.aier.org (secure)]

(Less than 50%)

[Post-publication note: You can read the 2007 CDC paper here. [link to www.cdc.gov (secure)] It is arguable that this paper did not favor full lockdown. I’ve spoken to Raracist Venkayya, MD, who regards the 2007 plan as more liberal, and assures me that they never envisioned this level of lockdown: “lockdowns and shelter-in-place were not part of the recommendations.” To my mind, fleshing out the full relationship between this 2007 document and current policy requires a separate article.]. https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

9/17/21—Is Democracy Worth It? (American Thinker)

By Francis P. Sempa

The great Italian sociologist and political thinker Gaetano Mosca in his book The Ruling Class (1896) wrote that "in all societies ... two classes of people appear — a class that rules and a class that is ruled."  The ruling class, Mosca explained, "always less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings."  Mosca observed that in all forms of government, there is the "dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority."  Every ruling class, wrote Mosca, "tends to justify its actual exercise of power by resting it on some universal moral principle."  Our current ruling class rests the exercise of its power on combatting systemic racism, rooting out domestic "insurrectionists," and protecting all of us from COVID-19.

Mosca believed that democracy was a "myth" that the ruling class in America and elsewhere uses to "help foster in the people ... the illusion that democracy is a fact."  He wrote that all ruling classes tend to move toward socialism or some other form of collectivism.  In democracies, he wrote, "[a]ll the lying, all the baseness, all the violence, all the fraud we see in political life ... are used in intrigues to win votes, in order to get ahead in public office or simply to make money fast by unscrupulous means."  An increasingly collectivist ruling class, Mosca noted, dispenses "favor, bread, the joy and sorrow of life."  Ruling classes may even become "[o]ne single crushing, all-embracing, all engrossing tyranny."

Mosca's theory of the ruling class was supplemented by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his book Political Parties (1911).  Michels shared Mosca's dim view of democracy, describing it as "nothing but a continuous fraud on the part of the dominant class."  Democracy, Michels wrote, affords the people the "ridiculous privilege of choosing from time to time a new set of masters."  The people's representatives "have no sooner been raised to power than they set to work to consolidate and reinforce their influence," and eventually they emancipate themselves from popular control.  The mass of people don't rule, Michels explained; instead, the elites who achieve power by the ballot box secure control of the institutions of collective power and do whatever is necessary to stay in power.  Michels famously called this the "Iron Law of Oligarchy."

Stegiel adds that the Adamantine law of Dulness rules over all. Media shouts Vaccines Save Lives! Lockdowns Worked By Failing!  There was nothing that was a failure aside from not being supremely tyrannical. Civilization was destroyed.  Lockdowns, Social Distance, Masks, Psychological Warfare all WORKED.  The Revolution won when Biden was installed. The new Bolsheviks are WOKE.  And these people are literally "Queer, Here, and Not Going Shopping." They will not go without a fight. Like Venezuelan gang members home is where they sit. This then forces the Duo-Poly to admit and agree it does not matter overall in Policy if a marionette is a President. The icon being displayed is enough. The icon need not be beloved. The icon must be stressed to be an icon. In 2024 two icon crash test dummies are contending for your endorsement of politics as usual. Is this not always the choice? Why? There is no spiritual force in these not icons. At the very best the dummies are too stupid to be better than Biden. At the very worst emblematic of NORMALCY.

We refuse self rule. We do not want it. Our crash test dummies are tele-robots for something. Not a human. Perhaps it is not Thanatos guiding the collective Western mind but a desire for mystical union with Dulness.

We are in the midst of a spectacular Fall that is guaranteed to become more violent and bitter, as the malevolent forces propelling this Crisis have decided to ramp up fear propaganda to implement their global reset, using authoritarian methods to compel the masses to comply.

Our nation, perhaps the planet I don’t know, is trapped in self-induced cognitive dissonance, and obstinately will not see the coming storm as it wipes out all vestiges of the present techno-consumption society.

Depopulation and the Great Reset go back to Thermidor. https://www.garynorth.com/public/13370.cfm

But could a nation of 25,000,000 be thus transformed? To the regenerators of France it seemed extremely doubtful; already the country was rent with dissensions, and any scheme for universal contentment seemed impossible of attainment. Moreover, the plan of dividing things up into equal shares presented an insuperable difficulty, for it became evident that amongst a population of this size there was not enough money, not enough property, not enough employment, not even at this moment enough bread to go round; no one would be satisfied with his share, and instead of universal contentment, universal dissatisfaction would result. What was to be done? The population was too large for the scheme of the leaders to be carried out successfully, therefore either the scheme must be abandoned or the population must he diminished.

To this conclusion the surgeons operating on the State had at last been brought. In vain they had amputated the gangrened limb of the nobility and the clergy, had paralysed the brain by attacking the intellectual classes, had turned (as in Aesop's fable) upon the stomach, that is to say, the industrial system, by which the whole body of the State was fed, and denied it sustenance--all these means to restore health to the State had failed, and they were now reduced to a last and desperate expedient: the size of the whole body must be reduced. In other words, a plan of systematic depopulation must be carried out all over France.

That this idea, worthy of a mad Procrustes, really existed it is impossible to doubt, since it has been revealed to us by innumerable revolutionaries who were behind the scenes during the Terror. Thus Courtois, in his report on the papers seized at Robespierre's house after Thermidor, wrote: "These men, in order to bring us to the happiness of Sparta, wished to annihilate twelve or fifteen millions of the French people, and hoped after this revolutionary transfiguration to distribute to each one a plough and some land to clear, so as to save us from the dangers of the happiness of Persepolis."

Another intimate of Robespierre, the Marquis d'Antonelle, a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, actually explained the whole scheme in print whilst the Terror was at its height. Beaulieu, who met him in prison, where he was incarcerated by Robespierre for giving away the secret of the leaders, thus describes the system as revealed to him by D'Antonelle: "He thought, like the greater number of the revolutionary clubs, that, in order to institute the Republic on the ruins of the monarchy, it was necessary to exterminate all those who preferred the latter form of government, and that the former could only become democratic by the destruction of luxury and riches, which form the support of royalty; that equality would never be anything but a chimera as long as men did not all enjoy approximately equal properties; and finally, that such an order of things could never be established until a third of the population had been suppressed; this was the general idea of the fanatics of the Revolution."

The Dull; they shall inherit the Earth.

Alexander Pope, poet. did prove this in 1728 and 1743.

The Dunciad: Book I.

The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,
I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!
Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;
You by whose care, in vain decried and cursed,
Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
Say how the Goddess bade Britannia sleep,
And poured her spirit o’er the land and deep.
    In eldest time, e’er mortals writ or read,
E’er Pallas issued from the Thunderer’s head,
Dulness o’er all possessed her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave,
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.