Oh if I live that long. I could tell my clone-kids about the days before the Great Burning. The Beforetimes before the blessed St AstraZenica blessed us with our gift-pills. They would smile for the allotted period before returning to their dream boxes, monitored by the Panopticon whose name is Nigel.
No one would remember that clownish thug who drove us into the cement of Covid. The brick wall made of hubris and the chicken game of Brexit. Remember Brexit? Oh such things I could tell thee of the time of the One Nation. Do you remember? In the Beforetimes there was One Nation, not the archipelago you know of today with its polyglot, BeyondSpagBol breakfast flakes and dinosaurs. In those times a slovenly king ruled our lands, not the Corporate Praetor - all hail the Praetor! - of today. He had a vision of a thing called Brexit. A maddening silvered box like a kaleidoscope. It is said that if you looked inside you would see impossible things born of your fondest dreams and darkest nightmares. The sundering of the One Nation and the terrible deal with the Dark Lord of Amerikh.
Oh sweet clone children. How I wish the Great Burning hadn't rendered me infertile that I might have had proper kids.
Not really, little buggers.
It is halfway now. next week will be 6 months. Does anyone remember the Beforetimes? I would ride the iron dragon; the living chariot and its human commander. Together this unclean hybrid would ferry me into the Big Place. There I would exchange circular coins for things called underpants and herbs to aromatise my food. What wonders I saw, beyond the hills that mark the lands of my home.
It is not for us to go beyond now, Mr Frodo. The road does not go ever on. Limited are our shires. An invisible boundary of bacteria based fear descends. A good fear. It reminds those of us with intelligence that we must be careful. Sadly though in these dark times there are many that lack critical thinking skills. They have been robbed of them by a fiendish conglomeration of media and profit. It is safe because we need you to work and make us rich. Fear not for the fruits of your good labour will trickle down like the blessed rains we've also ruined. Are you not grateful?
A gathering of the sadly naive happened again today: another protest by the Trafalgar faithful. The anti lockdown/vaccine/5g/BLM/left wing crowd. They claim reason as their weapon, arguing that, because they question things, they must be correct. Sadly this betrays their claims to critical thinking. It isn't enough to just question things, you need to be able to understand why they are wrong and present evidence. Telephone masts cannot transmit living bacteria. Lockdown is more likely if lots of people continue gathering en masse without masks. Your freedoms are not curtailed because you wear one in public. Yet they do not criticise any other aspect of life wherein our freedom is threatened, such as police oppression of minorities, state abuse of refugees, etc. They are selective and blind to the reality of how the state works.
They lack a class analysis. As such they are blown this way and that by prevailing predominantly right wing media narratives. This is evidenced by the incoherence in their rhetoric. The idea that class analysis is a product of a controlling 'cultural marxist' elite. A myth propagated by an actually controlling right wing increasingly fascist elite who are playing them for absolute suckers.
However, at this point, I fear these people are too far gone. I don't know how we can reach them before the virus reaches us - through them! Education is the key, talking to these people. But that requires decanting them from their echo chamber and propaganda bubble. Confronting them while they are ensconced mid protest will fail. Can this be done at this time? It can't really be done over social media - and the lies of Facebook are a major part of the problem given how they willingly proliferate junk science, dangerous ignorance, and bigotry. It is a petri dish of conspiracy and paranoia.
I know of no other solution, unfortunately. It may well be that authoritarian measures - that is, another lockdown - is required. That of course will play into their ideology. It's become increasingly inchoate; a blurred mass called 'freedom'. I don't specifically know what their demands are, but the are related to 'lockdown' and 'wearing masks', but no freedoms are curtailed by wearing masks, in fact they are facilitating as much normality as the pandemic allows.
So of course they just deny the pandemic even exists. It's an engineered project by the shadowy global elite (dangerously close to antisemitism as well - from the same people that will call Corbyn a 'cultural marxist'). This doesn't make any sense either. The powerful elites are capitalists. They depend on the masses to make profit for them. What good does a pandemic that upends that system and puts everyone out of work do? They don't know, but something terrible...it's 'coming down the line'. Prepare! They say.
If only they would, by developing a class analysis. The real key to this is class consciousness. The awareness of how the system works and who it benefits. Hint:
They ain't it.
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