How to Squeeze Blood from a Tyrannical Turnip
Progressive globalists have found in the current Pandemic that Ate a Planet a ready-made dream come true, a real-life “anthrax bomb,” as in Huxley’s dystopian forecast of the mechanism whereby mankind’s natural freedom reflex would finally be subdued, and the World State’s quasi-benevolent totalitarian social control achieved.
In keeping with the standard operating procedures for the development of state paternalism, as infamously articulated by Rahm Emanuel — “Never let a crisis go to waste” — the world’s neo-Marxists, neo-Maoists, and global corporatists (superficially varied shades occupying the same circle of Hell) have exploited this coronavirus outbreak as a test run for tyranny, or rather for gauging the level of compliance and meek submission they could demand from the world’s population on a moment’s notice, without so much as a public debate, election, or referendum to slow them down.
And the test has been a rousing success. Barely a few weeks of media alarmism, utterly unsupported by real facts and numbers, was enough to reduce the peoples of the formerly civilized world to sniveling bubbles of cowardice and childish self-concern, outright begging their rulers to take control and protect them, with their only complaints being that the controls were not strong enough, the obliteration of self-governance not total enough, and the power to subdue the non-compliant not applied severely enough.
So they, the progressive global authoritarians, have conducted their test, and secured the result they had hoped for: Their chattel (formerly called “citizens”) will resist no violations of liberty, and bridle at no demands for obedience, if only those violations and demands are couched in the rhetoric of mortal terror.
“You’ll die if you do not allow us to suspend civil society, override property rights, and cancel freedom of association,” said the authoritarians, through their mass media megaphones.
“Then please take control of us now,” cried the spiritually enslaved, so cowed by dread of a physical ailment potentially interrupting the non-stop fantasy ride of pleasure and comfort which they mistake for living, that they were instantly reduced to climbing over one another in the lunge to be first in line — first in line to claim the privilege of being denied the right to line up.
But that’s them, not us. I am not speaking to them — the masters and their hundreds of millions of slaves — for they would not listen, nor would they hear me even if they tried. I am speaking now exclusively to those still attuned to the frequencies of adult humanity and moderation, of freedom and common sense. I am speaking, that is, to the tiny remainder of spirited humanity, the outcasts and outliers who have stubbornly refused to relinquish their souls on command.
Seeing all of the deterioration outlined above, recognizing it, and reconciling oneself to it, in the manner required of one who finally accepts that he is vastly outnumbered by ignorant Deltas demanding their weekly soma ration, and hence that all attempts to reason with the crowd will fail miserably, there remains the question of one’s own practical course. That is, while the philosophic perspective — resignation to facts beyond one’s control, and unrestrained indulgence in the thinking man’s peculiar pleasure of understanding — is necessary and good, one still has to get out of bed in the morning, eat breakfast, and carry on with…something.
What sort of practical “something” is available now, to one who knows he can no longer reach his neighbors through the wall of fear that insulates them against rationality? Here is a simple suggestion, one very much in keeping with my constant concerns: Look to those among us who have not yet been utterly lost to the machinations of progressive propaganda. In other words, look to the children.
If there is one way to squeeze blood from today’s turnip of authoritarian overreach, it is this: Don’t send your children back to school.
To those of you among the happy few, my fellow outcasts, who are in a state of shock at the suicidal reflex of the “advanced world” in the face of a damned virus (and one that has manifestly proved to be far less deadly than the propagandists would have us believe), I can only ask, with all due respect, “Why so surprised?”
Have we not all been trained for this surrender? If you believe that there is something unnatural about the world’s easy descent into unlimited state power as the only answer to this alleged “crisis” — as though free will, individual responsibility, and courage in the face of blatant psychological warfare were notions entirely foreign to the human mind — then you must have had a moment when you wondered, “How were so many men, the bulk of our race, primed for such an unnatural response, such that almost no effort was needed, anywhere in the West, to shut down whole economies, destroy businesses and livelihoods, and succor panicked populations with the petty corruption of government pay-outs as a balm for the artificially state-impoverished?”
The answer is as clear as the elephant in the room, as obvious as the man behind the curtain. Humans have been prepared for this moment of surrender over generations, in public schools.
Having been effectively raised by the government (stop lying to yourself about who your real guardians were), we were all trained from ages five to eighteen to regard the state as our protector and problem-solver, rather than as a useful but dangerous instrument of our liberty. Having learned of society and morality from government agents teaching from an administrative-state-approved curriculum, we have been inured to the idea that coercive power is not, as per Lord Acton’s maxim, an absolute corrupter, but rather a benign and indispensable guide and engine of human progress. Having seen history almost exclusively through progressive and neo-Marxist filters — the past culled mainly for examples of man’s cruelty and systemic injustice — we accept a Deweyan distortion of democracy, roughly meaning state-manipulated mob rule, as the highest method of political interaction, which is to say that we find nothing essentially troubling about non-compliant individuals and their private wills being crushed in the name of whatever “we” (i.e., our opinion-makers) happen to define today as “the collective good.”
In short, if you want to know how an entire civilization was brought to its knees so quietly, to the point where a mere hint of immediate material danger has the vast majority of us ready to concede anything, sacrifice everything, and destroy anyone, in the names of compassion and good citizenship, look to the primary source of the ruling moral and intellectual perspectives of late-modern man. Look to the government schools.
And then do something about it. In this case, the proper and most-needed action has been inadvertently prepared for you by the state itself. In almost every jurisdiction, every “school district,” in the advanced world, children are currently at home, unable to attend classes, by order of their respective authoritarian schoolmasters. So keep them at home. Do not send them back to the re-education camps we call schools, whenever the state decides to receive them again. Say no. Deny the government the opportunity to do to the next generation what it has so thoroughly and effectively done to the current generation. Get any children within your range of influence out of the public school apparatus right now.
Consider, in light of my earlier point about the test-run element of the present global situation, how this coronavirus nonsense will be taught in the schools, and is already being taught in many online classes today: It will be presented either as proof of the value of centralized social control (social distancing regulations, mass virus testing, large-group restrictions, digital tracking of everyone’s daily movements, etc.), or as evidence of the need for more of such control in order to respond more efficiently “next time.”
This pandemic will immediately become a new pedagogical and psychological template for statist indoctrination. The overarching lessons will be clear and simple: “First, we need government to be more proactive and flexible, i.e., unlimited, during the next crisis. Second, populations have to become more public-spirited, i.e., compliant, from now on, in order to save more lives and show compassion for the vulnerable.”
This will all be folded very neatly into the existing social justice curriculum, thus reinforcing the analogous lessons regarding global warming, discrimination, sexism, the evils of capitalism and “the wealthy,” and the rest of the progressive morality textbook.
If you believe I am exaggerating in anything I have just said about the way this event will be used in teaching today’s children, then you simply are not paying attention to how public schools function today, worldwide — and why they function. For those, however, who are new to this and therefore skeptical, or who need a refresher course, you have come to the right place. I commend to your attention my book delving into the details of all of this, The Case Against Public Education, available for free right here.
Again, however, I must note that I am not speaking of revolutionary change or enthusing over a dream of mass resistance. I harbor no illusions about the current situation. Most parents today, “stuck” without a place to send their children while they are otherwise occupied, are thinking only, “God, what am I supposed to do with the kids at home every day?” They have been trained to respond that way, all their lives, since their own schooldays. This response is an implicit exposition of the first and most universal lesson of all compulsory schooling, everywhere the institution exists: The people we call “parents” today are for the most part merely glorified bunkhouse supervisors, playmates, and babysitters for the children they imagine are their sons and daughters. They may be the children’s parents legally (unless the state chooses to rescind that title for any reason, which they can and often do, on a moment’s notice) or biologically, of course. But a parent, in the specifically human sense that philosophers and poets have spoken of that role through the ages, is not essentially a legal or even a biological entity, but a moral and educational one.
Over the past two hundred years, and increasingly so with each generation, parenthood (in the human sense) has ceded its claim to its essential characteristics in favor of identifying itself by its accidental ones. That this moment of authoritarian assertion will have no effect in enlightening the majority of mankind as to what they have lost with respect to their children’s souls, is as damning a truth about modern political life as can be conceived.
For the happy few, however, who can still hear what I am saying, and care to listen, I cannot exhort you strongly enough. If ever there was a moment to reassert your true position as parents in the lives of your children, and to take a practical step toward emancipating your loved ones’ souls from the moral enslavement to which most of the race has now, very visibly, succumbed, this is it.
This is also the rational minority’s best and most realizable chance to squeeze blood from a tyrannical turnip. Turn the tables on the progressives. Refuse to give back the stolen goods they have left to your care during their “lockdown.”
