Thursday, July 23, 2020

Misplaced Fears

Inhaling Fear,

 Fear is in the air. I smell it. I see it in people's eyes and in their furtive actions, like anxiously jumping away from others.. 
Rulers maintain their power by managing the narrative which directs the fear in a way that makes people do what the rulers want. People are compliant when they comply because of fear, but it tires them out, and they don't do their best work.
 People long for release from the relentless pressure of fear.
Austin is a college town, and also obsessively compliant with masking and social distancing, because Austin jobs are compliance-jobs, in government, education and high-tech. Much was made of UT students coming back from spring break infected, as if they did not worry. What I have recently read is that levels of worry are very high in teens and twenty-somethings. What is also high is biological drives. That creates cognitive dissonance. When I heard there were COVID-sharing parties, I thought it was fake-news, but it appears that some college students did hang out with those recently diagnosed, and put money in a pot for the first diagnosed to claim. I've heard a young, pregnant coworker, very responsible and careful to comply, say that she would prefer to just catch it and be done with it. There was something like assent from her peers. We see it. Several of her peers are back to work after having had it. 
It's not so bad for most people, and we see the spectrum of illness personally.
My point is that the persistence of threat is deeply disturbing and emotionally exhausting. 
This viral threat won't fade much before next summer, I suspect. 
People under chronic stress are beginning to seek relief valves.

 People and other animals under increased stress from threats tend to do the same things they usually do, but harder and faster. They don't tend to do something completely different. 
It's just typical of animals, including us to double-down.
 This is probably part of the extremes of political dogmatism we are seeing all around us. The Social Justice Warrior "left" has crossed over into a world where logic and reason are cast out as tools of white-supremacist-imperialism. 
 Discussing this rationally, or looking at history to see what the other options might look like, are expressly forbidden.
Overheated emotions, especially fear, without self-reflection and thoughtful analysis can grow into The Killing Fields, The Cultural Revolution, and the worst mass purges of Bolshevism, which all killed millions, and made monsters of the killers.
 The power elites also get caught in the worst of these crises. They should be more careful, less smug, in feeding these kinds of little brushfires between social groups.
 Please consider that the wave of fear may be slightly leading the wave of massive societal change, now underway, We have been debating this inevitable change in abstract since the early 1970s.  It's now happening without any regard to our assumptions, whatever they were. That's scary.
 Being afraid of little things which we can manage by becoming more devout in whatever belief system we espouse, is a form of denial of the fact of the huge and sweeping changes now underway, and uncontrolled. These changes will take whatever form we, ourselves create, though each of us has some minor input. Those of us who see what is happening, and act constructively today, or last year, might have a little more cumulative effect, and it might be good.
 I think there is a special place in Heck for those who saw this coming since 2008 and built special bunkers in hidden places. I think they are creating their own, personal forms of heck. 
They will be preyed upon by the special predators. Yuck! I can't go there anymore.
 Do wear masks in crowds, especially indoors, and do it casually. It's some protection for everybody.
Don't think things will be ok after the November election, or after there's a COVID vaccine, or herd immunity.
 Things won't get better, ever. This is as good as it gets. None of us can get away.
I accept this new normal and do constructive work for those I love, and life on this planet. 
Growing food is good. (Grow food that produces steadily and can't easily be stolen all at once.)

 Eleni sent this historical review from Professor Paul Craig Roberts. Lincoln was a Racist (typical of his era), and the Civil War was about money and power, not slavery. It's a good historical review. Emotional issues get playe to make people pick sides, but the sides are really about power elites fighting over cash-cows. Southern agriculture created king-cotton, and sent money to banks and industry. The North wanted that money in Northern banks and factories, but England, and the Bank of England, had been giving Southerners better deals...

Global Capitalism is the main, hidden enemy and slave-owner these days. GloboCap is the unseen hand. Several people sent me this story. ("Know Yourself, and Know Your Enemy" to have a chance of prevailing in war.) 
GloboCap can take anything you might "fight" for, turn it into your slave-chains, and teach you to muder the evil-other.

Wayne Madsen: As the Covid-19 pandemic continues its deadly march around the world, a number of relatively dormant conflicts, as well as several well-known flash points, stand ready to place the world on the edge of a major armed conflict. History shows us that during times of stress – economic depression, religious strife, vacuums of political leadership, and public health crises like that which is now plaguing the world – the chances for war increase commensurately.

Sun Belt States Choose "Third Path" To Confront COVID-19 Without Destroying Economy
This is a modulated run at herd-immunity, with the modulating factor being hospital-overwhelm. Even this is hard to carry out in Texas, and the governor is under several lawsuits, personally, asserting that Greg Abbot broke the law by choosing to shut down certain businesses (bars, strip joints, massage, restaurants) and not others (grocery stores, churches, car repair). This might seem funny, but it's not funny to Greg Abbot. He has made it clear that he will only take any steps to limit business when the hospitals come under stress. He has been true to his word, and more, and he still gets sued, for acting a month too late to shut bars again, and reduce stores to 50% occupancy again.
 Additionally, Governor Abbot has been very clear that no penalty is to be enforced for failure to comply with his edicts, none. That's smart, because when fines are brought against people who don't wear masks, mask wearing decreases.
 People are ornery. I certainly include myself. 
People think more clearly if you don't threaten them with violence for disobeying, if what you condone is logical. 
Wearing masks in stores and restaurants, while coronavirus spreads, is logical, and supports the economy at as low a long term cost as possible.
 
It's hard on "last responders". Nobody thinks about the humans who pick up all the bodies and deal with all the dead.Tough job. We should think about them.

 Yale epidemiology professor Dr. Harvey Risch told Fox News's "Ingraham Angle" that he thinks hydroxychloroquine could save 75,000 to 100,000 lives if widely used to treat COVID-19, and that it's unfortunate that a "propaganda war" has been waged on the commonly prescribed drug which is not based on "medical facts."

John Cleese: Society Is Now Controlled By The Most Touchy, Emotionally Unstable, & Fragile People
​  ​“I believe there’s something wrong with these people. The reason they want to be powerful is that they want to control people, so that they don’t get lathered into situations that they can’t control emotionally. The one thing they fear is losing power, so they’ll do almost anything to hold on to it.
​  ​If they don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re talking about, there’s no way (the world) will ever get well.”
​ ​Cancel culture "misunderstands the main purposes of life which is to have fun", Cleese told Reuters, referring to the trend in which people are ostracised because of behaviour or remarks seen as objectionable.
"Everything humorous is critical. If you have someone who is perfectly kind and intelligent and flexible and who always behaves appropriately, they're not funny. Funniness is about people who don't do that, like Trump."

Laughing With My Fears

3 comments:

  1. However much the banksters/oligarchs were behind the Civil War, I doubt they'd've gotten far if it wasn't such an emotionally charged moral issue with the people. Like the guy sais, "You can't polish a turd."

    Or, as Lincoln said, "I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

    One side wanted slaverry at the expense of the Union (for whatev er that Union is allegedly worth), the other wanted manumission at the expense of the Union. The banksters mostly rode that tiger by the tail. That the North came out on top speaks to me of the power of technology over muscle, along with the inherently fractious nature of separatist state confederations versus unionised stated federations.

    "The supply situation for most Confederate armies was dismal, even when they were victorious on the battlefield. The central government was short of money so each state government had to supply its regiments. The lack of central authority and the ineffective railroads, combined with the frequent unwillingness or inability of Southern state governments to provide adequate funding, were key factors in the Confederate army's demise. The Confederacy early on lost control of most of its major river and ocean ports to capture or blockade. The road system was poor, and it relied more and more on a heavily overburdened railroad system. U.S. forces destroyed track, engines, cars, bridges and telegraph lines as often as possible, knowing that new equipment was unavailable to the Confederacy"

    Or like someone imaginary said: 'Never bring a slave army to a technologically driven battlefield.'

    THe history of banksters is that they lose as often as they win.

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    1. Robin said:
      "THe history of banksters is that they lose as often as they win."

      But the banksters are all on the same side now, at least in "the west".
      That's the thing that makes the system break. Banksters usually get most of the pieces, because "ownership", when the economy breaks, but periodically they take massive personal losses as the social structure changes.
      I really think that is about to happen, but I'm an optimist.

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