The Coronavirus Fetish, or anti-social “Social Distancing.” Christine McNulty’ via UKOA (Watford Observer)
https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/05/anti-social-social-distancing.html
“There’s no reason for increased penalties for reducing the 2 meter (6 feet) rule in the open air because viruses disperse in the open air; the rule isn’t applied when people are shopping in a supermarket and in many other indoor spaces where it can’t be policed.
“I think the govnmt is trying to avoid the formation of crowds and the potential for civil unrest.” (4.02 PM 5/10)
Prolific writer, Christine McNultty, is often published in the Watford Obsever, in the UK.
But rationality rarely enters the minds of power-lusters, with only the chance to use brute force whetting their appetite. Reason and force are antipods
Some good news is that a Dallas Texas salon owner was released from jail after defying a judge’s decision to imprison her for violating the and “social distance” orders. The governor of the state ordered her freed.
Some awful, outrageous news it that an Australian woman in Sydney who was demonstrating peacefully against the lockdown was brutally arrested and her young screaming son wrested from her grip by the police. She was roughly put into the police van, still resisting her arrest.
The current imposition of lockdowns, “stay-at- home” orders, and “social distancing’ – at 6 feet, between people – reflect an uncanny echo of how people lived in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and how people are behaving today to “fight” the coronavirus, behaving in compliance with government mandated and encouraged actions. (Masks, “ etc.) “Lockdowns” in Oceania were the rule of daily life, while “social distancing” was de regur. You couldn’t approach a stranger to make friends or ask for a date without risking the attention of the Party and the Thought Policeand endangering oneself and the person you want to know.. Lockdowns meant that one stayed at home and did not venture out to do something, such as search for needed things like razor blades. If you were an Upper or Lower Party member it was forbidden to “socialize” with the Proles or proletarians, and you could be punished, and even executed for doing so – if caught.
But, today, in our perishing “democracies, if you’re a scheming politician hungry for more power and control over the citizens you can “socialize” all you wish with impunity and with no fear of retaliation.
Orwell’s narrative about the life of Winston Smith contains a plethora of gritty detail of the everyday existence, the narrative to be admired because it conveys the miserable existential realities of life under tyranny in Ocenia.. But those realities beginning to manifest themselves in Western nations today.
As with the face masks, as noted in my column, “Stealth Fascism II,” enforcing “social distancing” has become a compulsive fetish and a constant excuse to persecute or harass citizens by the authorities and by citizens, to assert power. Some face-masked citizens will stare at you as though you should be marched behind a dumpster and shot. Park rangers, cops, and bureaucrats often jump at the chance to exert their power to punish citizens for not conforming to the arbitrary rules, or to intimidate people into compliance.
A Seattle cop spoke eloquenty on Instagram against arbitrary powers. He has been suspended because he refuses to remove his video.
As Heather MacDonald noted in an article about Trump not wearing a mask at a VE celebration:
“The first thing to be said about the VE Day episode is that the criticism of Trump for not donning a mask outside is based on no science at all. Outdoor transmission of viruses in a wide-open space is virtually unknown. Infection occurs overwhelmingly indoors, and requires close and prolonged contact. People are less likely to get infected by the coronavirus outside than they are to die inside from falling, poisoning themselves, or choking, as Vanity Fair writer T.A. Frank has pointed out.”
When you think of it, the enforcement of lockdowns and social distincing isn’t really about “fighting the coronavirus”; it’s about wielding political power against citizens who have been disarmed.
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