Apparently, some elderly infirm dude flurblegurbled his way through an address to the nation yesterday.
It’s an annual propaganda-fest where the incumbent tries to tell everyone how close to God they are and just how spectacular their policies have been, and are going to be. Half of the attendees leap to their feet in rapture - the other half sit like statues - or rip up the speech in a display of petulant posturing.
It’s all so tiresome and I can’t generate much enthusiasm for the vast majority of politicians, of whatever stripe or hue, these days.
It’s almost all posturing.
You hardly ever hear a politician say “well, I fucked that one up didn’t I? I’m sorry. Let’s work on putting things right”.
They always, always, always, squiggle and squirm and deflect and posture to try to make themselves look amazing.
I’m of the general opinion that the desire to become a politician should automatically exclude anyone from that role.
This is not to say that politicians don’t actually sometimes do good, even great, things. They do - although the opposition will always try to convince you that the policy that has been enacted is worse than the darkest of Hitler’s nightmares.
I’ve watched clips of Biden, both current and back in the day when he was somewhat more compos mentis and capable1, and the guy just creeps me out. There’s just something ‘off’ and insincere about him - I get the same vibes when I see clips of Tony Blair, too.
It’s got nothing to do with any policies - they should be judged on their own merits - it’s just a personal response to what I perceive to be the guy’s character.
Divisiveness, contrast, denouncements and emotion have always been a part of the game of politics. It’s not so much a ‘union’ of anything - more a perpetual state of disunion.
So, what would my state of the ‘union’ address look like? What would be my concerns?
Creeping Authoritarianism/Totalitarianism
The authoritarian and totalitarian responses of many governments to the covid ‘crisis’ was extremely disturbing. The measures introduced to ‘combat’ the outbreak of a deadly ‘new’ virus were wide-ranging and grotesquely disproportionate to the actual threat. It was abundantly clear all along2 that, whilst serious, the covid outbreak was nothing like the “unprecedented” existential threat it was made out to be.
There has been, as a result of the engineered covid hysteria, a paradigm shift in our relationship with government and its ability to control almost every aspect of our lives. Personal measures to protect our own health, our own freely-accepted management of personal risk, were rejected in favour of a “greater good” style of thinking that resulted in the imposition of a framework that explicitly delineated what we were allowed to do.
This is the opposite of the normal state of affairs in which ‘everything’ is allowed, unless explicitly proscribed in law.
Although most of those restrictions have been lifted in most places now and the discussion is starting to turn into an acceptance that the pandemic response was the wrong thing to do, the totalitarian nature of it is not being properly addressed. Under what circumstances do our governments have the right to implement such widescale restrictions on civil liberties?
The answer seems to be whenever we’re scared enough.
Censorship and the Control of Information
The idea that governments should be in a position to control the opinions that are freely shared online (or elsewhere) and that they have the authority to declare what is, and isn’t, “misinformation” is one that would have been unthinkable (outside of more totalitarian regimes) only a decade ago.
This power isn’t (always) being explicitly wielded, but is implicitly wielded by collusion with large corporate entities and institutions. The explicit statements of control - like the various online ‘safety’ bills that are being introduced (eg, the EU and the UK and elsewhere) - are worrisome enough. And these bills, too, talk about partnerships with Big Tech. The EU flexing its autocratic muscles after Musk’s takeover of Twitter and telling him that he would face serious consequences if he didn’t toe the line is ample evidence of the pressure that is brought to bear to ensure this collusion between public and private.
It is clear that openly expressed opinions are seen as a threat. The openly expressed opinions (which turned out to be correct) about the various covid interventions were very much seen as a threat and measures were quickly put in place in an attempt to restrict the ability of those opinions to propagate.
The various online ‘safety’ bills formalise and put in place a framework where this control can be more easily and readily implemented whenever it is deemed (not by us, of course) to be ‘necessary’.
This stranglehold of what is deemed to be ‘acceptable’ opinion will only get worse as governments begin to tighten the climate noose.
At stake here is nothing short of our freedom - for without the right to openly express our opinion without fear or prejudice, what ‘freedom’ do we truly have? If you can be fired from your job, or have your bank accounts frozen, or find yourself unable to set up a bank account in the first place, or lose all your social media accounts, because you said the ‘wrong’ thing - is this ‘freedom’ or coercion?
It’s ‘freedom’ contingent upon you behaving yourself and restricting your expressed opinion.
Don’t think this sort of thing is happening? Here’s just a microcosm, with examples from academia, of how all this process is currently working out and affecting people.
Governments and politicians will do their usual spot of sanctimonious posturing about ‘free’ speech - but what they’re aiming for is ‘free’ speech within a tightly-controlled boundary of what is, and isn’t acceptable.
What the ‘opportunity’ presented by covid has wrought is an acceleration of the trend to severely limit the boundaries of speech. Many more people now, as a result of the covid propaganda, think it’s right for governments to wield this kind of power. They’re OK with it - and that should be a major cause of concern.
Global Governance
In line with all of this is the increasing power that is being granted to non-elected global entities. Some degree of global coordination is a good thing. It’s important that we have some globally agreed set of human rights, for example. We need more global cooperation - not to fight such nebulous things as climate change or the latest super-duper-all-singing-all-dancing-BillandMelindaVirus - but to try to sort out why I measure ‘poverty’ in terms of being able to subscribe to Netflix, whereas millions of people on this planet measure it terms of being able to eat.
But the talk is of global health security, or cyber attacks, or saving the planet by making all our food out of insects. If the latest proposals under discussion are accepted then the WHO, for example, will have a quite extraordinary level of control over the world’s response to the next ‘health’ scare (and it doesn’t even have to be from some virus).
At the moment, it’s only the ‘west’ that is freaking out over the environment. China, for example, is still fossiling away and burning the shit out of coal faster than you can charge your Tesla. Quite why we in the ‘west’ have lost our marbles over this issue is not something that is clear to me but, as ever, I suspect wheels within wheels - rather than the bald-faced posturing of politicians who have proven to be not overly sincere.
So maybe there won’t be much global agreement about the climate - totalitarian regimes will always totalitarianate (new word - I claim it) - but all I can see is China welcoming the west as its new partner in the totalitarian enterprise. Have they already, behind closed doors, carved up the world into separate totalitarian super-regions I wonder?
Can the whole basket of loon known as ‘woke’ be slotted into all of this? I suspect so. We see many of the same features - the authoritarian and totalitarian nature, the calls for increasing censorship and control of ‘acceptable’ speech, the collusion with large corporate entities in this endeavour and so on.
As always, when major changes are being proposed, the age-old advice of “follow the money” should be heeded. Although it would probably more accurate to say “follow the power”. Power, like wealth, is steadily being transferred from the many to the few. Power and resources and control are being concentrated - and we’re being sold lies to justify it. Save the planet, it’s a deadly disease, be compassionate to the oppressed minorities (who in reality now have more actual power than those outside of these prescribed minorities).
As Maximus Conspiratorius once said, Cui Bono?
The difference between then and now is painfully clear. He was sharp, capable, abrasive and quick on his feet. He’s a shadow of his former self in my view.
The actual data - not the illusory speculations of the cretinous ‘modelers’ - showed from the outset that this disease, whilst of some seriousness, was not a pandemic so very different from others we have faced.
I've come to believe that the new tendency for politicians to refer to 'stakeholders' is preliminary to the transfer of power from the many to the few. It's scaring the heck out of me. I suspect that that by mentally substituting "ThePowersThatBe" for every place they use the word "stakeholders" we may get a clearer picture of this process in action.
What limits politics with regards to how totalist and authoritarian they are, has more to do with available technology and specifically communication and transportation technology, than with any ideology, culture or religion.
If the romans had had technology to create Echelon and CCTV theywould have done so without a second thought. As it was, they instead relied on informers, rumour and hired demagogues.
To attain power, one must be ruthless. To retain power, one must exert control. Doing so uses up resources, so it becomes a natural necessity to use power to streamline this process as to diminish the resource cost. Which in practice means depriving the masses of real choice, especially the choice to side-step coercive control even without challenging it. Stalin would ever have tolerated Amish in the USSR despite them not being a threat in any way; that an alternative exists is threat and challenge enough.
Look at Britain of the 19th century: how free was a bricklayer, a miner, a factory worker? If his little plot of land and his house was suddenly in the way of a captain of industry, what rights and freedoms did he, the common man, have?
None. None at all. Because the only real thing is power.
And power is the ability to force others to obey your will, and the ability to not obey the will of others.
Power does not corrupt. That is the excuse of the eternally powerless, to comfort them and take away their guilt for not seeking power even over themselves.