You Have Been Primed

I find it astounding, truly remarkable really, that the people who 10 years ago would have been vehemently opposed to the idea of their government tracking their every move are now openly advocating for that policy and most of those people are advocating for it in the hands of a government they hate no less.

In the wake of 9/11 both Blair and Bush pushed through a fuck load of questionable laws with limited scrutiny with the threat of terrorism hanging over people to force them into agreeing to it; now just as then that threat is real and does pose an existential risk but it is being abused by governments as a means to push through their agenda with little resistance.

If you really can't see just how much of your civil liberties you are ceding right now and just how complacent you are being then take a step back and ask yourself one simple question, if there was no pandemic at all, would you be okay with what is happening?  If the answer to that question is no, then ask yourself a few follow up questions, do you trust your government, do you trust these powers to be given up once the pandemic ends, do you trust these powers will not be abused?

The UK government openly advocated for the creation of "Covid Passports" these would be documents not for the purpose of international travel but as forms of ID for domestic travel, which would be designated a classification or certification of healthiness.  Those certified healthy would enjoy their usual civil liberties, whilst those who were not certified would be presumed to be unhealthy and would have limited civil liberties.  This is right out of a dystopian novel and this is the actual proposal of the health minister in the UK.

Make no mistake, no society can exist with a clear conscience where its people are separated into classes and have their liberties restricted based on the classification afforded to them by the government.  This is an incredibly dark concept and history has shown us exactly where this leads.

When we look back at the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and 7/7, and we look at the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, and all that was done by the Blair and Bush administrations there are so many things that people are angry about.  The threat of terrorism served its purpose incredibly well as a means to manipulate people and control them.  The US and UK were conditioned to accept what are now two of the most authoritative and invasive governments they have both experienced in generations.  Complacency has grown and people have been subdued and subjected to mistreatment with little recourse for those in power.  Both nations now have leaders that the majority of people in both countries hate, and would love to see gone, but the opposition to those leaders is still so fragmented that it cannot assemble with cohesion to challenge it and in the face of rising discontent there is a tidal wave of hostility that is growing with each passing day.

These government rose to power on waves of populism, it is ironic then that in their wake a second wave approaches that is so much more destructive than the first and they have absolutely no hope of controlling it without resorting to extreme measures of control.  Therein lies the risk for the citizens of both countries, as great as your anger grows to be, those in power do not go quietly, this is the preface to major conflict, this pattern has repeated itself countless times throughout history and it has never ended peacefully.

There is a war coming, whether it be ideological, or physical, or both, it is coming.