Last week on Question Time, a freak show I don't watch anymore, Julia Hartley-Brewer, hard apologist for the status quo, made the claim that lockdown rules aren't required. Instead the state ought just rely on people's common sense. This is, at best, extremely disingenuous. Firstly, there is no universal common sense. This is just a myth used by groups to advance an agenda. It's a form of gaslighting; if you don't share those values then there is an implied accusation: what's wrong with you?
Moreover these are people who themselves aren't looking to follow the logic of their claim. Superficially the claim implies that we don't need to be told what to do because, naturally, we'll do it ourselves. But they don't want to do that. These are people that oppose wearing masks and staying in doors. Of course they will tell you they are happy with some measures, but will never accurately define what they are. Of course just some measures aren't enough, that's why more drastic measures were, eventually, undertaken - and, as we can see from the data, they work!
It's not just a case of common sense though because this is, for all of us, an unprecedented situation. We have never lived through this in our lifetimes. Having to take far reaching social measures to avoid the spread of a potentially deadly virus was unthinkable even last year. Now, or at least at the outset, we are thrust into this, learning as we go. To expect people to divine the 'correct' course of action is ridiculous. Consequently the idea of having to wear masks is understandably uncomfortable. To argue people will just freely choose to do this is misleading. Quite the opposite: Hartley Brewer knows full well people won't, which is precisely why an authority is required. The problem is that the only authority we have is bothe corrupt and incompetent. This doesn't reinforce the argument.
Sadly, the BBC sees fit not to challenge this prevailing right wing media dogma. People like her, and of course the intolerable Hitchens, are forever being platformed. In fact Owen Jones attempted to interview Hitchens and explain all this to him on his Youtube channel. It is a painful affair. For all his success at explaining Owen is just stymied repeatedly by a bloviating hypocrite who refuses to act in good faith and show reciprocity in the conversation. It is, sadly, a waste of time talking to these people. Best that can happen is that some people watching, perhaps fans of lunatics like Hitchens, will be persuaded. But as we have seen these days, dogma prevails. Feelings don't care about your facts.
We are a week and a half from Christmas and, again, we are unprepared. Another epoch in miniature within this year of hell. Another the government navigates not by rationality but by hope and desperate belief. This time of year is already difficult enough. The days are cold, often inhospitable, bookended by squeezing darkness at once both soft and unforgiving. It is a period where the psyche is laid bare, I feel. One is alone with thought; the mind risking the snowblindness of enforced introspection wherein the future is a promise and a threat.
We are due a vaccine, but first a series of terrible months. If the government are not careful they could jeopardise the roll out of that vaccine. The virus appears to be on the up, but that may be a blip. Christmas will decide, not just financial ruin. January is, in comparison, often a very bleak month. The world thaws but painfully slowly and there is only the rest of winter to look forward to. No more festivities. Next January could well see a third lockdown. A last chance saloon for a deeply unpopular government fresh out of ideas and possibly the EU. All the more reason to celebrate? All the more reason not to!
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