Will You Take The Test?

In the past couple of weeks I've made an effort to dig into the nitty-gritty statistics of corona and had quite a few enlightening debates on the subject. I must admit, though, that I haven't learned as much as I expected to about the virus. It's been easier to get data about how COVID behaves in other countries than the US even though we spent a billion on tests (at least). What data I've gotten from the US has mainly taught me lessons about Man not microbe. While trying to hash-out fractions of a percentage-point (and shaking my head at many of the wild numbers that get thrown around in speculative stampede) I noticed that there are really two kind of people out there. The Wing-Nuts and Commies? No, this old division in culture and politics is getting hackneyed to absurdity, despite all attempt to apply the old frame to this new situation.

See, we're not really talking about "just flu or not just flu," "lockdown or no lockdown," each of us is processing events according to our own larger perception of reality. Whereas the "Right" may be terrified of lockdown-wrecked seizure of all economic and political control by the most ruthless elements, the "Left" is more worried about the virus itself and wants to use the  virus as a sort of equalizer. Both arguments are operating in relative darkness. We can't be assured that the political and economic rights of yore will ever be restored, just as we can't know for sure what the corona will do as it eventually comes back sooner or later. While the Left wants the government to somehow dominate the existing private sector and protect us from the thing, the Right just wants to keep opportunistic people from using the virus-lockdown as a weapon against them.

I think the virus is less inherently lethal in itself and more dangerous as a political/social tool for ockdown madness, on-demand. That would put me on the Right, but I don't feel myself to be there in reality. I'm more of a moderate by nature, I can't but help see the uses of both ideologies. People naturally want to compete and market with each other. They also want to cooperate non-competitively with each other too. Both are part of us.

Why not just invent a new paradigm instead? The dichotomy I'm observing travels laterally through both world-views and has to do with how one perceives the power-structure. The two poles are the "New-Normies" and the "Tinfoil-Hats."

Usually the conspiracy theorist is a despised and skulking creature, but today this dog will have his day! Not that everybody will start questioning the very foundations of their reality, but, on the other hand, I predict the harder the State and private sector push-back the more questions will rain on them. I posted six-years ago about the manual for combating conspiracy theories that Cass Sunstein wrote, "Conspiracy Theories," a decent enough addition to the cannon of conspiracy-theory-theory, if flawed in it's postulations. One of the first points he made was that actually banning conspiracy theories tended just to help promote them. Debunking was of course written off as pointless; a nice excuse to get out doing your job, Cass! Nevertheless, he has proceeded from that publishing to a pretty impressive resume including Obama's information tzar. Of that one needs it's own post, or two.

Thus, as a student of the master, I have been recently surprised to see actual conspiracy theorists banned very summarily. This has accelerated and finally gotten to the peak where almost no actual content-creator knows when they could get the hammer. Many do play along, but it is often in the cynical nature of the Soviet bureaucracy. Suppressed ideas can only be suppressed so long.

The more appropriate approach, says Sunstein, is to infiltrate the conspiracy theorist's ranks and subtly detract and distract, sowing discord as much as possible. I would presume that this approach is also being used and why the public discourse about virus becomes more political in nature than is healthy. Maybe to his credit, since his thesis was written the state/private sector have merged intelligence work to a very perilous degree.  I don't doubt that it is feasible that the intelligence community is functioning autonomously inside of it's private-entity creations and controlling the state from without, so to speak. The budgets have gotten crazy, the oversight is a joke. Senators on the intelligence committee don't even have security clearances for high enough to know anything about what they are charged with over-sight, and the private sector cut-outs are a total black box

Why then take the risky approach of banning outright? I think it is a sign that conspiracy theories have gotten to be a real threat. If the fight is inevitable, may as well do it in the open. The people that are in the know are in the know, whether they feign ignorance or not. The people who don't know by this stage won't know until it's too late to matter. At least that's the plan.

But there also arises opportunity on the other side: if the private-sector and government elites work too closely hand-in-glove, they can disrupt the illusion of the Left vs Right dichotomy. It becomes less about which dangerous piece in the dangerous game of building civilization's power structures is worse and more about the whole power-structure itself. Why argue about private-sector individualism and public-sector egalitarianism? Everyone can see that Walmart-Socialism has become a real thing. If you can see what we're up against, then you don't need any ideology to help you understand what to do.

The lockdown economic attack is global attack, it targets the entire world. Therefore, that which opposes it must also be global. That is to say, each nation as a member of the community of nations has to restore to herself her independence and sovereignty. And within those nations the people also have to restore their communal sovereignty. Only then can we successfully restore individual sovereignty, since the community actually determines what an individual's concept of sovereignty is.  This will become more clear as the economic destruction really kicks-in.

However it may be, the question before us now is merely: will you take the Test? Remember, a + could strip you away from contact, from that basic building-block of humanity: other humanity. But to not take it will likely have some similar cost, leaving you with the untouchables, the unclean. And that's life for ya! Never any easy choices...