Brave New Normal (Part 2)

My columns haven’t been very funny recently. This one isn’t going to be any funnier. Sorry. Fascism makes me cranky.

I don’t mean the kind of fascism the corporate media and the fake Resistance have been desperately hyping for the last four years. God help me, but I’m not terribly worried about a few hundred white-supremacist morons marching around with tiki torches hollering Nazi slogans at each other, or Jewish-Mexican-American law clerks flashing “OK” signs on TV, or smirking schoolkids in MAGA hats.

I’m talking about actual, bona fide fascism, or totalitarianism, if you want to get technical. The kind where governments declare a global “state of emergency” on account of a virus with a 0.2% to 0.6% lethality (and that causes mild, flu-like symptoms, or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, in over 97% of those infected), locks everyone down inside their homes, suspends their constitutional rights, terrorizes them with propaganda, and unleashes uniformed goon squads on anyone who doesn’t comply with their despotic decrees.

I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the police track you down with your smartphone data and then come to your house to personally harass you for attending a political protest, or attack you for challenging their illegitimate authority, and then charge you with “assault” for fighting back, and then get the media to publish a story accusing you of having “set up” the cops.

I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism where the secret police are given carte blanche to monitor everyone’s Internet activity, and to scan you with their “surveillance helmets,” and dictate how close you can sit to your friends, and menace you with drones and robot dogs, and violently pry your kids out of your arms and arrest you if you dare to protest.

I’m talking about the kind of totalitarianism that psychologically tortures children with authoritarian loyalty rituals designed to condition them to live in fear, and respond to absurd Pavlovian stimuli, and that encourages the masses to turn off their brains and mechanically repeat propaganda slogans, like “wear a mask” and “flatten the curve,” and to report their neighbors to the police for having an “illegal” private party … and to otherwise reify the manufactured mass hysteria the authorities need to “justify” their totalitarianism.

Yeah, that kind of stuff makes me cranky.

And you know what makes me really cranky? I’ll tell you what makes me really cranky. It is people who publicly project themselves as “anti-authoritarians” and “anti-fascists,” or who have established their “anti-establishment” brands and “dissident” personas on social media, or even in the corporate media, either zealously cheerleading this totalitarianism or looking away and saying nothing as it is rolled out by the very authorities and media propagandists they pretend to oppose. I don’t know exactly why, but that stuff makes me particularly cranky.

I’ll provide you with a few examples.

The militant “Portland anti-fascists” who the corporate media fell in love with and made famous for bravely fighting off the Trump-loving Putin-Nazi Menace over the course of the last four years, as soon as the Corona-Totalitarianism began, did what all true anti-fascists do when the state goes full-blown fascist … no, they did not “smash the state,” or “occupy the streets,” or anything like that. They masked-up and started making vegan hand sanitizer.

Popular Internet “anti-imperialists” started accusing everyone opposing the lockdown of being part of some far-right Republican plot to “promote mass death under the banner of freedom” or to “normalize death” to benefit rich people, or being members of a “death cult,” or something. Celebrity socialists took to Twitter to warn that we would “shortly have the blood of thousands of people on our hands,” and call us “anti-vaxxers” and “flat earth fucks.” Indie political and military analysts patiently explained why governments needed to be able to pull people out of their homes against their will and quarantine them. Anarchist anthropologists averred that the lockdown wasn’t damaging the productive economy; it was only damaging the “bullshit economy,” and those complaining about being out of work were people whose work is “largely useless.”

Others simply looked away or sat there in silence as we were confined to our homes, and made to carry “permission papers” to walk to work or the corner grocery store, and were beaten and arrested for not “social-distancing,” and were otherwise bullied and humiliated for no justifiable reason whatsoever. (We are talking about a virus, after all, that even the official medical experts, e.g., the U.K.’s Chief Medic, admit is more or less harmless to the vast majority of us, not the Bubonic Fucking Plague or some sort of Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu … so spare me the “we-had-no-choice-but-to-go-totalitarian” rationalization.)

My intent is not merely to mock these people (i.e., these “radical,” “anti-establishment” types who fell into formation and started goose-stepping because the media told them we were all going to die), but also to use them as a clear example of how official narratives are born and take hold.

That’s somewhat pertinent at the moment, because the “Brave New Normal” official narrative has been born, but it has not yet taken hold. What happens next will determine whether it does.

In order to understand how this works, imagine for a moment that you’re one of these people who are normally skeptical of the government and the media, and that you consider yourself an anti-authoritarian, or at least a friend of the working classes, and now you are beginning to realize that there is no Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu (just as there were no “WMDs,” no “Russian hackers,” no “pee-tape,” etc.), and so it dawns on you that you’ve been behaving like a hysterical, brainwashed, fascist minion of the very establishment you supposedly oppose … or at the very least like an abject coward.

Imagine how you might feel right now.

You would probably feel pretty foolish, right? And more than a little ashamed of yourself. So … OK, what would do about that? Well, you would have a couple of options.

Option Number One would be admit what you did, apologize to whomever you have to, and try like hell not to do it again. Not many people are going to choose this option.

Most people are going to choose Option Number Two, which is to desperately try to deny what they did, or to desperately rationalize what they did (and in many cases are still actively doing). Now, this is not as easy at it sounds, because doing that means they will have to continue to believe (or at least pretend to believe) that there is an Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu which is going to kill hundreds of millions of people the moment we stop locking everyone down, and forcing them to “social distance,” and so on. They will have to continue to pretend to believe that this Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu exists, even though they know it doesn’t.

And this is where that Orwellian “doublethink” comes in. People (i.e., these “anti-authoritarians,” not to mention the majority of the “normal” public) are not going to want to face the fact that they’ve been behaving like a bunch of fascists (or cowards) for no justifiable reason whatsoever. So, what they are going to do instead is desperately pretend that their behavior was justified and that the propaganda they have been swallowing, and regurgitating, was not propaganda, but rather, “the Truth.”

In other words, in order to avoid their shame, they are going to do everything in their power to reify the official narrative and delegitimize anyone attempting to expose it as the fiction that it is. They are going to join in with the corporate media that are calling us “extremists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” and other such epithets. They’re going to accuse those of us on the Left of aligning with “far-Right Republican militias,” and “Boogaloo accelerationists,” and of being members of the Russian-backed “Querfront,” and assorted other horrible things meant to scare errant leftists into line.

Above all, they are going to continue to insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that we are “under attack” by a “killer virus” which could “strike again at any time,” and so we have to maintain at least some level of totalitarianism and paranoia, or else … well, you know, the terrorists win.

It is this reification of the official narrative by those too ashamed to admit what they did (and try to determine why they did it), and not the narrative or the propaganda itself, that will eventually establish the “Brave New Normal” as “reality” (assuming the process works as smoothly as it did with the “War on Terror,” the “War on Populism,” and the “Cold War” narratives). The facts, the data, the “science” won’t matter. Reality is consensus reality … and a new consensus is being formed at the moment.

There is still a chance (right now, not months from now) for these people (some of whom are rather influential) to stand up and say, “Whoops! I screwed up and went all Nazi there for a bit.” But I seriously doubt that is going to happen.

It’s much more likely that the Brave New Normal (or some intermittent, scaled-down version of it) will gradually become our new reality. People will get used to being occasionally “locked down,” and being ordered to wear masks, and not to touch each other, and to standing in designated circles and boxes, like they got used to the “anti-Terrorism measures,” and believing that Trump is a “Russian asset.” The coming economic depression will be blamed on the Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu, rather than on the lockdown that caused it. Millions of people will be condemned to extreme poverty, or debt-enslaved for the rest of their lives, but they’ll be too busy trying to survive to mount any kind of broad resistance.

The children, of course, won’t know any better. They will grow up with their “isolation boxes,” and “protective barriers,” and “contact tracing,” and they will live in constant low-grade fear of another killer virus, or terrorist attack, or Russian-backed white supremacist uprising, or whatever boogeyman might next appear to menace the global capitalist empire, which, it goes without saying, will be just fine.

Me, I’ll probably remain kind of cranky, but I will try to find the humor in it all. Bear with me … that might take a while.

#

CJ Hopkins
May 20, 2020
Photo: Twitter – Vanessa Beeley

CJ Hopkins Summer 2018 thumbnail

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Patreon page (where you can contribute as little $1 per month), or send your contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our staff up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian novel, Zone 23, or Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, please feel free to contact him directly.

65 thoughts on “Brave New Normal (Part 2)”

  1. Reblogged this on Writers Without Money and commented:
    I personally disagree with the idea that the threat of Covid-19 is inflated. It’s already killed almost 100 people in my town (admittedly most over 80 and in nursing homes). But there’s no question that the ruling class is going to use the crisis as an excuse to institute a new form of authoritarianism. I’m also a little skeptical of the media’s demonization of right wight protesters. It’s not the gun toting hillbillies in Michigan who spread the virus. It was wealthy New Yorkers going to their Summer homes in March.

    Like

    1. Not inflated. Blown completely out of proportion. The initial propaganda warned of approximately 157,000,000 deaths and hyped a 3.4% death rate. Over two months later, here we are. Which is not to say that there is no virus. Of course there’s a virus, a nasty virus that is killing mostly older folks and those weakened by other medical conditions. A virus which in no way warrants or begins to explain the totalitarian “emergency measures” that have been imposed, or the paranoid, pathologized “new normal” culture that is being methodically introduced … and mindlessly welcomed, or ignored, by so many.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Yes, they used and are continuing to use falsified data . There are 150,000 deaths on this planet every day. Winter season always brings the deaths of the ill and elderly the numbers are not out of the normal deaths .So I question the data news provides and ask whether they just politicized the “flu” season for their own agenda .As that is what it looks like.
        https://notpublicaddress.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/enter-the-truth-of-the-human-virome-which-is-in-all-healthy-people/
        This tyrannical power grab is based on belief of false figures and propaganda.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. You guys have jumped the shark here.

      Yes, governments and private companies are using the COVID-19 outbreak to introduce or test drive all kinds of authoritarian measures and privacy invading practices. Yes, law enforcement goons overreact to minor infractions and the spy agencies tell us they need to spy on us even more than they already are “for our own protection.” The media is hyping the pandemic to no end and Russiagate has been replaced by the new yellow peril. All these things need to be called out and resisted.

      However, none of this means that this disease isn’t dangerous, particularly to people in poor health and those over 65, or that quarantine measures aren’t necessary to halt it spreading throughout society.

      It’s easy for you to say “only” a few people who get sick are going to die if it’s not you or your family members that are in that position.

      Basically you are saying that your right to go around infecting other people (many of the people acting as COVID-19 conduits are asymptomatic) is the more important than another person’s right to live disease free.

      Congratulations, you have internalized sociopathic neoliberal individualism.

      The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is new (there’s a clue in the name) and health workers and scientists are constantly learning more about how it works. This is why information about is often contradictory.

      What’s not up for debate is that it kills more people than a fucking flu and it is more contagious than a flu bug.

      The end result is people who wouldn’t otherwise be getting sick and dying are getting sick and dying.

      There is anti-authoritarianism and then there is knee jerk anti-authoritarianism that panics at the very idea of governments and collective responsibility. You are in the latter camp.

      No I don’t think the cops should be boot stomping people for having party or flying drones into their face for standing to close to someone. I don’t support any of that or any type of PATRIOT ACT infringement on civil liberties.

      We live in societies where collective responsibility and collective responsibility are denigrated as something godless commies impose on you right before they drag you to the Gulag. Permanent camps of homeless people, families living in cars and people doing heavy labor for a pittance are normalized.

      Assholes like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Wall Street bankers who think destroying the fabric of society so they can get even richer are glorified as aspirational role models. Guess what? Like you, they are all about their individual rights and fuck everyone else.

      You have joined the dark side, buddy.

      Western governments did a piss poor job responding to this pandemic and implementing quarantine measures.

      Collective responsibility is anathema in our hyper-individualized capitalist free-for-all so they ignored the outbreak for months as it made its way around the world and followed that with a panicked “lockdown” implemented using coercive “nudge” measures and mindless repetition of Orwellian neoliberal propaganda terms like “social distancing.”

      In a sane society a temporary quarantine order wouldn’t be met with howls of irrational misguided outrage and it wouldn’t be used to repeal even more civil liberties and privacy rights.

      Do you even realize that by opposing the idea of quarantine itself, rather than how it is implemented, and screaming about how your right to selfish individualism is sacrosanct, you have swallowed the neoliberal/libertarian Kool Aid?

      Probably not but maybe you will and update your take to reflect that. Like I did.

      Like

      1. You can call it a “quarantine,” if that makes it sound nicer and more “collectively responsible” for you, but it is a lockdown, enforced by police, with force. There is no other way to “implement” a lockdown. “Quarantine” is what you do with sick people, so that they don’t infect others. Lockdown is what you do with prisoners. And you can blow your “dark side” guilt-trip out your ass. Tell it to the millions of poor and working folks who are going to suffer and die, or be debt-enslaved, in the coming economic depression so that you and your fascist friends could feel “safe,” or “collectively responsible,” or whatever.

        Liked by 9 people

      2. “However, none of this means that this disease isn’t dangerous…”

        The Flu is extremely dangerous (like bad drivers and some mushrooms and bondage with hulking strangers) but Duh Masses never cowered behind the blinds, sipping bleach, over the Flu… because the Flu needed a serious re-branding from the Mysterious People who tell us what to do (e.g.: superimpose the French flag on your Facebook profile pic! Open the window an applaud at 8pm! And bizarre things of that sort!)… so those people executed the well-orchestrated rebranding ritual and VOILA. The sort of sickly types most likely to die of the Flu are dying of Flu-like symptoms during Flu season and the Mysterious People who have been caught lying to us about just about every panic-inducing “War” or “domestic crisis” for the past three generations… are the people assuring us that it’s NOT THE FLU! It’s FLU-PLUS X!!! SO PUT YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR HEADS AND WALK BACKWARDS WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED TOWARD THE 11th CENTURY AND DON’T STOP UNTIL WE SAY SO!

        Unprecedented.

        The parallels with Mao’s Cultural Revolution are worth considering… (except this time, the Boogieman wasn’t the decadent Reactionary Bourgeoisie, it was the rebranded Flu, and the decadent Reactionary Bourgeoisie get to play Kapos! Hillaryite soccer moms, and their Vegan daughters, with gluten-free truncheons! Weee!)

        Liked by 2 people

      3. “Do you even realize that by opposing the idea of quarantine itself, rather than how it is implemented, and screaming about how your right to selfish individualism is sacrosanct, you have swallowed the neoliberal/libertarian Kool Aid?”

        Do you even realize that by branding anyone uncomfortable with Totalitarian overreach, by a thoroughly corrupt de facto government of unelected billionaires and the functionaries in their pockets, you are working (as an unpaid intern, one hopes) for these unelected pseudo-officials?

        “Collective responsibility….” begins with preventing the re-installing of Kings and Feudal Lords in what was supposed to be a modern civilization featuring a representational government with built-in safeguards against influence-buying billionaires and their various hyper-individualized, capitalist agendas.

        I’m not sure what *you’re* drinking but it’s closer to what they were handing out at Jonestown than Kool-Aid.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. As usual, the Kool-Aid metaphor needs to be corrected, Jonestown was Flavor Aid, Ken Kesey was Kool-Aid as in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

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      4. It’s a low consequence infectious disease. That’s how Public Health England (PHE)reclassified it back in March.
        Low consequence, not ‘high consequence’.
        This means it’s not bad enough to be classed as high consequence.
        PHE are the front line reference labs that work with pathogens day in,day out.
        The bullshit you are espousing comes from bought and paid for academics who don’t go anywhere near real labs or do any real work.
        In the US, same as here in the UK and Europe, they are doing their level best to categorise every death as covid19.
        The language is telling- its died ‘with’ covid19, not so much’from’ covid19.
        Fell off a ladder and landed on your face? If the PCR test identifies a matching genetic fragment then guess what? Yep, you died ‘with’ covid19. You are now a covid 19 statistic.
        So get the fuck off your superior horse, stop telling people they are drinking the libertarian kool aid or what the fuck ever.
        Take a look in your own glass pal – your drinking piss and they’re telling you it’s lemonade…

        Liked by 4 people

      5. This is NOT a quarantine since we were all locked inside and harassed by cops for no good reason when outside, not only the infected.
        Some populations are more at risk (here in Canada, 91% of deaths are in the older than 70) not a SINGLE death or severe case in the less than 18 (so why shutting down the schools?! Why not only the kids living with elderly or better yet leave it to the parents’ decision).
        The case fatality rate in the vast majority of people is comparable to the flu (and it’s probably less since we are not testing enough now), and we’ll see it better when we’ll test for antibodies to the disease and to estimate precisely how many people were asymptomatic or had a very mild form. I suspect lots. So the mortality will be even lower than the actual 0.7 to 2%. We don’t have yet a precise idea of what the denominator is for the fatality (deaths/cases).
        The severity of this was inflated and blown out of proportion by the media: compare it with the annual deaths of malaria(435,000) or tuberculosis(more than one million) which are more concentrated in some areas and not global and you’ll start to appreciate by how much. The deaths were often “with Covid” instead of “by covid”. (e.g.: Patient with multiple comorbidities dies from severe bacterial pneumonia and renal failure 10 days after COVID infection. I will write reason of death covid, but is it really?)
        I’m a physician in the most covid “hit” hospital in the country and I’m scared. Not by the virus but with what the state and the media have done with it! I wonder why? and that’s what terrifies me.
        There is absolutely no scientific/epidemiologic based motive to do what they have done. none.
        And what about the moving goal posts? 1. “We lock you up so we can flatten the curve” becoming… “We lock you up until there’s a vaccine or a cure”!!
        This is not “selfish individualism”! This is reasonable doubt and skepticism!

        Liked by 1 person

      6. What disease?
        A list of different symptoms of already know diseases and bacterial infections?
        Quarantines lock up unhealthy people locking up healthy people at home and taking away heir freedom of movement on ” incorrect predictive”falsified data is not a quarantine” its unlawful human rights violation. Its tyranny.

        Liked by 2 people

      7. “However, none of this means that this disease isn’t dangerous, particularly to people in poor health and those over 65, or that quarantine measures aren’t necessary to halt it spreading throughout society.”

        Now, a rational person would say you quarantine and take care of those, instead of locking down the whole population. But I guess with that panic in your voice rationality is no longer possible.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. peter moritz
          May 26, 2020 at 15:25

          >Now, a rational person would say you quarantine and take care of those, instead of locking down the whole population.

          Depends on what one’s goals are, doesn’t it? ;)

          C.

          Liked by 2 people

  2. These situations, are, essentially *real* IQ Tests (unlike those phony approximations administered on paper in clean, quiet, low-stakes environments) and the sensation many of us now feel is the isolation/exasperation natural to the region of the skinny snout of the intellectual bell curve at its impotent front end. As I’ve written:

    “The problem is a very old one: for every Smart person, there are 30 Dumb people. For every Skeptic, there are 100 Believers. And even more complicated are the Smart people who act Dumb to fit in. The only Hope we have is the fact that 1,000 well-organized Smart People are more powerful than 1,000,000 Dumb people… we have proof of that… we just need to find 1,000 well-organized Smart People who aren’t Evil.”

    Liked by 2 people

  6. “It is this reification of the official narrative by those too ashamed to admit what they did (and try to determine why they did it), and not the narrative or the propaganda itself, that will eventually establish the “Brave New Normal” as “reality”…
    Yes. Exactly.
    But I’m not sure they *can* admit it, even to themselves, and that is something I’m having trouble understanding. This whole thing, to be honest, has me mystified. I don’t get why people who questioned the whole WMD hysteria are suddenly trusting the Covid hysteria. Maybe because WMD was “over there” (I’m in the US), and abstract and covid is “here” and it has to do with contagion and everyone is suddenly OCD. Idk.
    To think there is a real virus is COMPATIBLE with questioning the lockdown, fer chrissake, many doctors have done so. But now there’s this forcing of a false binary: “right wing extremists” are the only ones who question lockdown, versus “good”, “reasonable,” “science-believers”, who don’t. I remember feeling this way after 9/11, but this seems worse.
    Anyway. I’m grateful to you and a few other writers during these crazy-making times.

    Liked by 7 people

  7. You can sway a person more easily with fear and emotion than you can with fact and reason. It is also easier to lie to someone than it is to convince them they’ve been lied to.

    Liked by 5 people

  8. Excellent article. It was the same with 9/11. I suspect that far more people eventually realized the truth about 9/11 in the years that followed but couldn’t bring themselves to admit, perhaps even to themselves, that they had been so momentously duped. This especially applies to those who consider themselves intelligent, educated, etc. There were many exceptions, of course, but most took the second option as you accurately outline here.

    With respect to the comment from Lorie, I do believe most people are more likely to question the lies that seem to mainly affect “the other over there” (Iraq WMD, motives for other wars) than the ones where “we” are the target here on our own soil (9/11, COVID, even JFK and other assassinations).

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I don’t see the panic-demic followers as having “made a mistake”, myself; more likely they came to a gently (or less gently) guided conclusion. The unanimity of thought we’re seeing is most unusual, and deserves scrutiny.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Correct … the piece was mostly referring to those “anti-establishment” personalities who normally are (or market themselves as being) on guard against official mass hysteria/propaganda campaigns, and thus more resistant to such guidance than the average person. Some of those personalities probably really did just get duped this time, are now are trapped in their “positions” because they can’t publicly admit that they got duped … which is going to compound the damage as they repeatedly rationalize their hysteria going forward. Which is how this propaganda machine is designed to work.

        Liked by 1 person

  11. Could be cawed -Krazy “Rona Tahm or mebbe
    ABCD Asocial Bat Cootie Delirium.
    I would see the latter as a very infectious group hallucination
    brought on by a -thought to endocrine response-
    Evoked by -believing as if gospel-
    some recently and continuously repeated MS media memes
    such as
    -You people, Be in Terror Now of THIS impending Untimely Death-
    -Do as You are Told and you will be Safe-
    C. Casteñeda once wrote something like
    Death is always at the tip of your left hand.
    It is your greatest advisor.
    Ask it your most important questions

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Brilliant essay. Thinking outloud…I think the only thing that needs more exploration is to expand upon why, the cognitive basis of, the intellectual chattering class are so easily mentally co-opted. Is it some variation of the Stockholm effect? Possibly Francis-sure has covered it in her ‘Why good people remain silent…’ series. CJ mentions in part one that certain people find excuses to go along with and align with authoritarianism. It would be great to see some psychological discussion on the roots of the followers of authoritarianism. Possibly covered in the academic article ‘the meek do not inherit the earth’ … To revisit or please send me links if you find good insights on these types of matters… Ultimately why do some follow along and why do some become writers like CJ who see straight past the Orwellian bullshit?

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Yes, because we all know plagues have played practically no role in human history whatsoever so it is completely irrational to try and minimize exposure. Only 2% killed, which we magically knew immediately, which is good because 5% would have been time to pull the ‘oh shit handle’, or was that 10%? and besides everyone else is just fine right? Except the 20 percent who need to go to the ICU and be put on a ventilator and end up with permanent lung damage. Or the rest of the people who get it but don’t go to the hospital who describe it as by far the worst flu they have ever experienced. Yeah they few percent who are asymptomatic are the only people that matter. Good thing we had those authoritarian government dictatorships to tell us all to stay home three weeks after just about everyone was already staying home as much as they possibly could, you know except the workers we are all too glad to sacrifice on the altar of capitalism.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I love a good laugh… but I do not see how ANY humor will ever arise from the needless decimation of millions of jobs that never should have happened in the first place – and those jobs are not coming back. I now have to brace for my kids learning nothing in class due to upcoming “crisis mode” lockdowns and the incessant wearing of masks. I don’t think the “leaders” will dare allow us to rush back to anything resembling normal soon. Doing so would would make it appear like they got it wrong from the get go. This charade will go on indefinitely. CDC just issued guidelines for the schools reopening in the fall – and it is only May!

    Liked by 2 people

  20. Thank you CJ – I consider you to be one of the most articulate dissenters and truth tellers. Where’s the (inter)national movement to call bullshit on the bullshitters? Given the comments I see here, at OffGuardian and other sites, pretty sure there are millions of folks out there (witness protests in the US, Germany, etc) that see through the charade. Wondering if there’s willingness to start a mass movement that brings all people (left, right, independent, black, brown, white, etc) together into one coalition – demanding accountability from so-called elites. Also doubtful that the Archonic attempt to subjugate Gaia can succeed – seems to be more a question of how many of us are sacrificed, and who/what’s left standing at the end.

    Liked by 3 people

  21. Regardless of whether you feel the government chose a bad strategy to deal with the pandemic or not, your ideological framework – like pretty much all US political actors- is that of liberalism. Free individuals denied representation by collectivist bodies like goverment or bussiness monopolies. This is antithetical to any socialism. 19th century anti-authoritarians were not individualists fighting against statism and fascism arose to fight bolshevism (you can read up how the soviet union fought pandemics, it wasn’t by respecting individual liberty) not free thinkers. Facsism is not collectivism or people having duties and responsibilities to one another. This ideological confusion means in practice that no opposition ever arises in the US, it’s people divided by regional business clans fighting over who is the real defender of liberty.

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  23. Spot on C.J. Amazing that with 3+ years of the flatulent “Russiagate” hysteria barely in the rear-view mirror so many “progressives” and so called “leftists” are completely willing to simply grab the next big glass of MSM Kool aid and start gulping it down!

    I suppose I’ve now seamlessly morphed from a “Putin Apologist” to some form of “epidemiological science apologist” for simply finding the dissenting voices of scientists much more credible and convincing than those MSM propagandists who literally lie for a living.

    If any of your readers aren’t familiar with this Swiss site linked below, it is an excellent clearing house for scientific opinion and data that is effectively filtered out of any and all MSM reporting on our glorious “pandemic.” https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

    Liked by 2 people

  24. A false reality given reality by belief. Magic of illusions which is what the cabal’s occultist mind controllers work with . Their understanding of how we are co creators and how to manipulate ego minds using fear.
    I’d just like people to add the word ” alleged” before the word virus as the science and facts have been lost to believers in this virus hoax. A false flag op for a tyrannical political freedom grab, we don’t have to be believers .
    Its madness alright and the question is will we chose to be ruled by fear, anger and ignorance( darkness) or will the light of love win.What ever you feed you strengthen.Don’t be cranky CJ . The humor is the extremist stupidity with no evidence of a ” new deadly disease” caused by one virus( corona) everyone believed( as their minds were frozen in fear mode and they know nothing about science , medicine , virology, epidemiology , immune system ) .
    Its must be humorous to the mind controllers.
    https://notpublicaddress.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/supreme-court-declared-the-unlawful-locklowns-illegal/

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  25. And you know what makes me really cranky? I’ll tell you what makes me really cranky. It is people who publicly project themselves as “anti-authoritarians” and “anti-fascists,” or who have established their “anti-establishment” brands and “dissident” personas on social media, or even in the corporate media, either zealously cheerleading this totalitarianism or looking away and saying nothing as it is rolled out by the very authorities and media propagandists they pretend to oppose. I don’t know exactly why, but that stuff makes me particularly cranky.

    Haven’t yet learned to see all that, and all what is about like that, as comedy — low-rate comedy, but when were we told we’d get to choose all the time the comedy we’d be spectators of? We were never told that.
    In Italy, the core of “anti-fascism” was the very city where Mussolini’s approval rates had touched the highest figures, Bologna. And of course, before it became unmistakably clear how the war was ending, these anti-fascists were way less anti-fascistic than after it.
    The city that had been 80% with Mussolini became an 80% anti-fascist city, right when the outcome of the war became clear.
    And in other European countries the pattern was about the same.

    But the author of a book like Zone 23 must know one of the principles of human society and mainstream culture is not just truth denial or truth avoidance, but truth reversal :).

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  44. Can I ask you CJ how you know there is a really a “new deadly virus” that causes exactly the same symptoms as other “diseases” ( influenza, common cold, COPD, stress induced hypoxia etc etc)?
    My theory, as they have not proved it , and there was no pandemic when they declared one is they are using all the deaths of sick and elderly in winter season, declaring all deaths caused by covid19 .
    That like the other propaganda the virus itself is also unreal propaganda.
    Believing makes it real.

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