A Fluid Situation
Not every person who has been granted power over others necessarily wished to assume that power. But no person, once granted power, ever wishes to relinquish it. New excuses are always found to rationalize prolonging the new status quo of empowerment, or to expand it. To let go of one’s will to control may be of the essence of wisdom, but practical efficacy — power in the material world — is forever the mortal enemy of wisdom. Hence the irreversible ratchet of authoritarianism.
Anthony Fauci, so caught in his web of lies that even he can see he has nothing left to save him but chutzpah and powerful allies, has opted to assume the progressive authoritarian’s favorite rhetorical position, namely to laugh at and mock his opponents, in lieu of presenting a reasoned argument against their criticisms. (Note to my former readers who will never care: Donald Trump exploits this method every day of his life, being nothing but a living caricature of progressive authoritarianism.) Thus, in response to “Republicans” (a label used to belittle his critics, many of whom are outside of partisan politics) who suggest Fauci should be prosecuted or otherwise held accountable for his role in funding the kind of dangerous research that most likely created the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone’s favorite bureaucratic martinet performatively laughs in the world’s face, and even claims that his critics are “really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.”
It is dangerous to criticize me because I represent science.
Paging Lord Acton.
“Lockdown”: A concept largely unknown and practically unthinkable in the democratic world two years ago, but so commonplace today that the general population, throughout the entire world, now reflexively craves this condition as the first and most natural response to each new headline hinting that a sick person might be roaming — unrestricted! — through the streets of your country. As long as “the situation” remains so fluid, the authorities and their mouthpieces tell us, we must be prepared to comply without warning or debate, to will our own tethers, to freely deny ourselves the basic liberties that will be stripped from us by force — for our own protection, of course — should we dare to refuse to adopt any randomly reinstituted lockdown rules voluntarily, in anticipation, preemptively, and in principle forever.
The precedent is fully established. Men have almost universally chosen their petty physical safety, as defined in a fit of mass hysteria, over all other concerns or interests. Freedom is explicitly perceived as a condition less likely than unlimited state power to establish or protect petty physical safety. It is now reasonable to conclude that in any condition in which even a low intensity prodding toward fear for one’s safety is presented, men will henceforth disregard all notions of freedom — which is to say all intrinsic limits on external authority — in favor of their highest priority, which has, without any referendum or constitutional rewrite, become the unrivalled essential function of government throughout the Earth. One has only to press the collective fear button to illicit the collective submission response. One side effect of this response, naturally, will be the increasingly merciless marginalization of outliers, meaning of those who, through their careless and antiquated prioritizing of liberty over physical safety, demonstrate that “they do not care about others,” and who must therefore be coercively exiled from normal social life, or worse, lest they endanger us all with their irrational desire to live free.
