A "left" that justifies oppression antithetical to its principles in the name of public health and a "right" that carved out one reasonable line in the sand while changing nothing else about itself
More or less that. I'm certainly under no illusions about the severity of what happened after 9/11.
Ask the families and the communities of the 5 million+ murdered by the most recent two decades of American wars how more or less inconvenienced by Covid they feel. That said, clearly Covid is an equivalent or greater escalation, very likely planned and orchestrated by all the same powers, employing combinations of regulatory capture, institutional bias, blackmail, financial inducement, threats, propaganda, group-think, legislative chicanery and self interest, all aimed at complete removal of any last vestige of autonomy.
Bodily autonomy is the last battle ground remaining and many of you have surrendered without noticing. That would seem undeniable at this point. Soon you will all have less right to your own body than you currently have to express an opinion in the 'public' space. And many here, while being against all or most such things, have argued consistently for the mechanism (Covid) to be sanctified. Much as it pains me to say it, the furthest-out there are generally the most accurate amongst us, certainly when it comes to the big picture.
Forty years into the Neo-liberal project, I have to say to my ten year old self, he who observed its beginning with considerable scepticism: there have been no great surprises. I can’t believe so many didn’t see it coming but now that it's here, most embrace it for convenience if they aren't already shareholders. From Academia to the Arts, technology to medicine, even science is not exempt, everything is up for grabs to the highest bidder, including the truth. Don’t get me wrong, the truth eventually does come out, but only in small print and even then, only once it can have no possibility to affect anything.
The ‘Free Market’ remains a myth, an irrational fig-leaf for unbridled aggression and greed. There never was any competition; competition itself being a pseudoscientific misreading of Darwin. Today, a monopoly of four or five companies quite literally own everything at various stages of apparent remove. Societies are atomized and fragmented along economic and ideological contrivances. The price always goes up, just as surely as the quality always comes down. Workers are once again at the mercy of feudal overlords, mere cattle, their rights and conditions dwindling. Say it aint so.
Left or Right as presented is a discussion of Pepsi or Coke, rather than asking whether anyone should put that shit in their body in the first place and what, if any, alternatives could possibly exist in such an environment.
There is no political or media Left in any part of the American establishment. Same in the UK after the last few years since December 2019, but importantly, this final stage of the process really began on September 11th, 2001, the equivalent for our countries of September 11th, 1973 in Chile.
Total regulatory capture and the revolving door between defence, commerce, finance, media, politics and policing ensures complete homogeneity within any notional disagreement. Even up until the last few years, from a European perspective, the perception was that you have no left in America. You've been so far to the right for most of my life it just isn't funny. Yet this discussion of left vs right trundles on and on as if it has some power to describe the world today. The UK similarly, after forty years of intensive work by all the same forces, any distinction is meaningless. Let's face it, the trillions in looted wealth buys a lot of man hours to make it so.
As I write, the privatised water companies are once again set to pollute with every kind of shit imaginable, the owner class are now pouring raw sewage into our rivers. Sure, that'll help. The ability to afford a doctor will soon be the preserve of the favoured few in the UK, those who can afford it. The final round of NHS privatisation is going through Parliament aided and abetted by both sides of the Covid 'debate'. The state can legally detain us without charge indefinitely, in an increasing number of circumstances convict us without a trial by jury and even kill us if it wishes, through any number of legally available avenues. Students are burdened with a lifetime of personal debt before they get their first job. They will not even get that job let alone hold it down
if they have a record of independent opinion on social media. There is simply no possibility of independent opinion in 'Public Life.'
What is the so called right in this context? What is the so called left? Just the same owner class.
When I drill down to what people actually believe, and almost daily, I'm talking to whatever narrow cross section of opinion remains
there is actually very widespread agreement on what not to do. The disagreement is mostly over words and imaginary concepts which have no real meaning or relevance and can't be explained rationally once the clap-trap is stripped away.
The bottom line is that everyone I have spoken to over the last two years who still has a television is having a really hard time understanding what is happening to them. They're more fearful, more likely to employ jargon, more likely to respond with heightened emotion to any challenge, generally less well informed
and far more likely to be possessed by outrage at some other minority or group who are also without any power of autonomy whatsoever, just like them.
Rant over!
