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I don't really have enough karma to be able to waste responding, but I'll make an exception for you, since you asked more politely than most. First, there's no
by vanniv 6y ago
I don't really have enough karma to be able to waste responding, but I'll make an exception for you, since you asked more politely than most.
First, there's not much secrecy involved. It isn't a secret at all that, Hollywood, the American mainstream media, and the political left are all on the same side. It's been obvious for 30 years now.
What we are currently living through is a left-authoritarian consolidation of power. Like other similar consolidations in the 20th century.
That is why, within 24 hours of the first house-arrest orders, propaganda about how our old lives of freedom are gone forever because they were "irresponsible", and how we must all get used to "the new normal" began.
Dr. Fauci says that physical human contact is a thing of the past ("nobody will ever shake hands ever again"), governors, especially those of "blue states" have all acted to either make their house-arrest orders indefinite (like in CA) or to declare that they will continue for multiple years (as VA announced yesterday, for example).
Enforcement is gradually increased everywhere, and citizens are increasingly encouraged to snitch.
Political protests are banned. Even organizing them online is being locked down, with states pressuring Facebook and Google into deleting people's accounts if they even mention the existence of a protest.
The thing is, it takes time to take a society used to freedom and fully consolidate it.
The house arrest orders are the start -- now, when the government eventually let's people out of their houses, but only on conditions (like wearing a tacking wristband, showing your papers to any government official, having to have "a legitimate purpose"), people will be so desperate to leave home that they'll agree.
With "contact tracing" apps and "mandatory isolation", the government will be able to declare any person they need to silence as "contaminated", and they go back to imprisonment, with no recourse, no due process, no burden of proof. Even better, having communicated with a "contaminated" person automatically adds you to the list of the unpersoned.
The economic disruption has already made 1 in 4 Americans dependent upon government handouts to survive. Every week, another 4-5% join them. An authoritarian government needs it's people to be dependent for survival, in order to ensure cooperation.
Meanwhile, the food supply is being turned off. We already have a third of our food production offline, and are most of the way toward driving all independent farmers and ranchers into bankruptcy. We are pretty much guaranteed to have widespread hunger by the fall. This will leave the way for a government takeover of food production.
But, in order for the consolidation to work, they have to keep us all imprisoned willingly until they finish consolidating enough power to make it permanent, or we will all just go back to our lives as free people, the economy will recover, and people won't be dependent upon the would-be dictators for their continued survival.
The next 3-6 months are critical to breaking the back of the capitalist system and soften everyone up to accept the new freedomless world. It will take that long to drive enough people to poverty, hunger, and desperation for them to be willing to go to the authoritarians and beg to be ruled.
This isn't a secret, and it isn't really new. It's more or less how every current left-authoritarian state was formed -- only with more technology and fewer guns.
- edmundsauto 6y agoIt's interesting to see the effect of a strong confirmation bias at play. I appreciate you taking the time to respond, and would challenge you to think through your perceptions if you started from a different assumption. Narratives drive how we see the world. In concrete, objective, measurable terms -- what do you mean by a "left-authoritarian consolidation of power"? From my perspective, the right is the one really good at consolidating and protecting their power, while the left is a little ADD about what they care about. (And are thus less effective at being in charge, even if more Americans profess those beliefs.)
- vanniv 6y agoUSSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia. These are all successful left-authoritarian power consolidations from the 20th century. Other than the WW2 Axis powers, there aren't many major successful right-authoritarian consolidations from last century. Many parts of the right are fundamentally opposed to government power, which makes creating a united right-wing front to consolidate totalitarian power really difficult. Unlike the American left, which works practically in lock-step, the right is a fractured, fractious mess that can hardly agree on anything, except maybe that the other side is bad sometimes. Even when the Republicans controlled all branches of government from 2016-2018, they couldn't accomplish anything, because unlike in the Democratic party, there's just no unity. As far as narratives go, I know well the power of the narrative. That's how we got where we are: the left owns the narrative. They invested three generations in controlling all avenues of knowledge and information dissemination, and it has completely paid off. I didn't start from any particular assumptions. Well, I'm sure I did, because you can't not, but I'm just taking people at their word and going by what they say. The left in America is fundamentally opposed to free enterprise and capitalism (see: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Buttigeg, Yang, and every single Democrat candidate. see Obama, "The Squad", Pelosi and Maxine Waters.) There is a unified drumbeat message that free enterprise, capitalism, profit, capital itself, and, ultimately the freedom of people to make their own lives and choices are anathema. There is crystal clear, unified messaging from every powerful corner on the left that freedom needs to end, and that, with the help of the Covid crisis, it is ending now. I'm just taking them at their word.