(I was going to focus on my work of fiction too wasn't I 😄, but that hasn't quite happened either. I haven't completely abandoned it though, so maybe at some point I'll be able to return to it. If we ever return to normality again.)
So yeah, I really wanted to move on. The whole Brexit ordeal was exhausting and emotional in many ways. So it felt good to draw a line under it, shake hands with everyone (can we do that anymore!) and begin to build bridges.
But now we have this virus business.
I'm going to come out and say it right at the start. I believe this virus is just a standard flu variant. One very cleverly politicised to cause fear and push agendas. I think it's been hyped up in the mainstream media, heavily propagandised in China and Iran (places where it's fairly easy to manage a narrative), then in turn ramped up in the western countries through the use of testing.
Normally when people have the flu it's simply diagnosed. We generally don't test for the specific strand. Now we're testing for this specific virus we're finding it, and of course we're much more likely to test people with serious cases, as they're the people seeking medical help. So it looks much worse than it is in reality.
You also have false positives due to tests having a margin of error, so that can add to the numbers too. If you test 100 people who don't have the virus, but the test has a 1% margin of error, then one person out of every 100 may test positive. Even though they don't have it.
Create a bit of panic, and ramp that up, and you soon have an endless number of cases.
So you can engineer scary numbers through the strategic application of testing. Lots of older and more vulnerable people die in hospitals of regular flu every day (sadly). So there's always a ready supply of people to test. I suspect this is why Trump refused the WHO tests. As he no doubt understood it would likely lead to many cases being found and a sense of panic created, based upon the misleading perception that would've been created. At least I'd like to hope that's the case. It would be nice to think at least a few world leaders aren't fully on board with this huge social engineering project.
I did touch upon the virus back in January, but I soft-pedalled it, hoping I could avoid expressing my deep scepticism about what was going on. However, even then it looked awfully staged. The footage out of China was unconvincing to say the least. But I kept my big mouth shut. Aside from a few soft memes on Twitter.
Again, I didn't want to be here typing this. If I'm smart enough to see what's going on I'm also smart enough to understand it may annoy people if I point it all out, but here we are. Many European countries in lock down. The US and UK close to, or more or less in, lock down. How can you not speak up? It would be wrong not to. People arrested for leaving their house without permission? ..because there's a flu virus? Sorry, I have to say something.
Chinafication
So how did we get here? I may as well give my appraisal of the bigger picture given we have nothing much else to do.
My general impression is that lots of the higher up type people in this world simply prefer the China model, and would like the west to go a little bit more in that direction.
When trade with China was originally opened up (back in the Nixon/Kissinger era) the promise was that through trade we would influence China. And that China perhaps would slowly become more democratic. More like us.
However, that hasn't quite happened. It's now 2020, and there's still not a great deal of democracy going on there. What has happened though is that lots of very wealthy and influential people in the west have took advantage of that huge economic opportunity that was created, and have gotten very cosy there. They've essentially took the technology and creativity of the West, and married it to the cheap man power of the East. To make a lot of money. With little regard for the poor Chinese doing the work, nor the people in the US and other western countries that have seen their towns and cities de-industrialised.
And in the process they've started to realise "Hey, this China model is great". "We can do whatever we want."
"It's so organised. We can make plans without worrying that there'll be a different guy in charge in four years time."
"We don't have these little idiots with their "rights" and lack of education getting in the way. We can do things 'scientifically'. We can put the 'experts' in charge."So we have this situation where the elite class have effectively bought into a technocratic vision, and have convinced themselves that this is the best way forward for humanity. No doubt like all people believing that what they are doing is right and necessary (often what people believe is right tends to be what they see as right for themselves of course, it's quite natural and we all have this bias to some degree).
The fact that they haven't been getting their way with things lately, like Trump and Brexit, no doubt only fuels this belief further. With Trump attempting to put an end to the US-China status quo especially messing things up for them. They really do not like it. He's literally ruining their enormous plans. (And again, if you're invested in a particular vision of the world or a particular belief system you do naturally tend to see someone threatening that vision as an enemy).
So now as a consequence of that it appears we have this engineered chaos. Started in China, with the bought and sold-out mainstream media pushing that the solution for the western democratic countries is to copy China. To make things a little more technocratic and manageable for these wealthy and corporate elites ..and if they can push Trump, Bolsonaro and other elected nuisances out of the way with this then all the better for them.
It's very easy to see, once you realise what's going on. As I currently sit and type this the UK is still open for business. Yet Apple, unlike everywhere else, have closed their UK stores to "stop the spread of the virus". It seems many of these big companies with deep ties to China are very eager to push this panic along. With little regard or respect for the democratic countries that gave them the freedom to come into being in the first place. Again, they've grown to like the China way of doing things a little too much. Enjoying the best of both worlds, and not appreciating the great benefits of democracy and the rule of law that they were born into.
It's a very dangerous attitude to have. As this sort of short-termism and reckless self-interest will just make the whole world much poorer. In every way. Including for themselves too in the end. The China they've created may look very clean and technologically advanced, but all the creativity, all the ideas, sprang forth in free westernised countries like the US and Japan. If the west becomes more like China, then the human spirit of the whole world will become suffocated, and then everywhere will become like the Soviet Union. A clunking, but 'managed' dictatorship.
(So if anyone up in those higher echelons is reading this. Please, start working with democracies again. Accept that you can't have it all your own way. Then people like me can stop writing this crap, and we can all get on with our lives.)
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