You need some explanation for the fact that...
I’m actually optimistic about the general direction of COVID policy in the United States now. As Walter Kim declared a couple of days ago:
I would also direct you to Eugyppius’ recent “how we get out of this” post which, after you get past the first paragraph, is optimistic as well. And because it is relevant to my post today, let me just mention that, in a comment, I said that for a day or two there in 2020 I thought the BLM protests in the US might be the “end” of COVID here. Not that the disease would go away, of course, but rather that we have a culture, and especially a media culture, that just flits from one obsession to another, and therefore it seemed briefly possible that racism obsession would replace COVID obsession. Or, put another way, secularists looking for a god keep jumping from one presently popular deity to another. I appreciated his reply. Remember that in Germany they don’t know about capital letters (little joke there!).
re: 'secularists looking for a god'
absolutely, i even planned a section of this post, on how the increasing secularisation of western society coincides with the growing frequency of these parareligious hysterias, but i had to break it off into a draft for a future piece.
it is obvious that a deeply traditional, religious society would react to SARS-2 in a vastly more sensible way, and that secular societies are very spiritually and psychologically unstable.
“Secular societies are very spiritually and psychologically unstable” is a comment you could sit upon for a while. Perhaps you could even summarize the rest of this post with “progressivism was and still is inherently unstable”. Made me think also of people like Jordan Peterson who seem to believe that the dominance of Christianity, or something like Christianity, is necessary for the existence of the sort of society in which they want to live, but they cannot personally bring themselves to believe in it. I am glad I do not have to live with that mental tension.
But, you need some explanation for the fact that...
That said, the departing mayor of New York City declaring this morning that clearly what we need is still more vaccine mandates has prompted me to spit out a post I’ve been sitting on for a while. The point here is not “ha ha, progressives are such hypocrites” but rather to ponder, in the spirit of “I have learnt more about human nature in the last two years than in my preceding forty-seven”… what really is motivating people, then? Because, for many of them, apparently it isn’t what they claim to believe in at a surface level.
Therefore, you need some explanation for the fact that…
The people who spent years saying “my body my choice” and “women should be able to make their own healthcare choices, period”, overnight became advocates of the state making healthcare choices for all women, and men, and children, in the form of vaccine mandates. And bizarrely, as abortion was back in the news a few days ago, they returned immediately back to “women make their own healthcare choices” when abortion is the topic, right in the middle of also voting for vaccine mandates, with no obvious mental awareness of any contradiction between the two.
The people who spent years telling us that photo identification was too great a burden to require it to vote, and racist, are the same people who became vigorous advocates of a requirement that you must show a digital health pass to do almost anything.
The people who spent years telling us that they were the anti-corporate side of US politics, that corporations are generally our enemy, and that you must be wary of their incentives when they interact with the state… have now abandoned all of those positions, especially though not exclusively when it comes to Big Pharma. Big Corporate is now our best friend and they want what is best for everyone. Indeed we must help defend them (as if they need our help) from their own employees seeking things like vaccine exemptions. When they join in mass campaigns with the state to promote products that increase both state power and their own cash flow, that should not prompt any skepticism or concern. Indeed we should just celebrate their goodwill.
The people who spent years telling us that borders, basically, should not exist, that they should be open and freely crossable by anyone at any time, have become border hawks that would put the 2010 Republicans to shame. Long term border shutdowns and health requirements to cross borders are good and just even if they make no sense… as they usually don’t, because as soon as a disease is widespread on the interior side of a border, they make no sense.
The people who spent years telling us that healthcare should be nationalized and free for all are now giddy at the prospect of making care as expensive as possible for the unvaccinated, or denying it to them entirely.
The people who spent years telling us homeschoolers were socially maladjusted decided rather rapidly that kids are resilient and in-person schooling wasn’t all that important.
The people who spent years telling us that disparate racial impact of a policy, regardless of intention, was almost the definition of systemic racism, decided that any favored policy (like vaccine requirements) is exempt from that consideration.
The people who spend years telling us “discrimination is discrimination” now think discrimination on the basis of health status, even when it doesn’t make sense (and it almost never makes sense when your vaccines don’t prevent transmission anyway), is a moral imperative.
The people who spent years stressing “consent” so much that it seemed to be the only component of their morality now believe that medical consent requirements, perhaps the first principle of medical ethics, are an unfortunate and unimportant impediment to progress.
And finally, the people who spent years telling us America had a critical thinking problem, and that thinking for yourself is a good thing, now believe it is quite dangerous to ever question the experts.
What does this mean, though?
What is the explanation for this rapid change, though? Again I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll offer a few thoughts, which you have probably heard from me before. But underneath all of these is, as Tara Ann Thieke said a few days ago, the fact that principle is a rare thing, especially in public life, especially when principle is going to cost you something. Many people make decisions for other reasons.
Therefore, one, it’s a status game. These were not ever principled positions for many people so much as they were people mimicking the comments and beliefs of people that were, in their world, high-status people, so they would feel like high-status people too, and perhaps advance in their own circles. I suspect the whiplash on beliefs about school closures and border closures is especially explained in this way. It is easy as can be to imagine the American Left being the “keep schools open at all costs” people and, as we still sort of see when it comes to illegal immigration, the “open borders” people. That most of the Left was quite easily convinced to adopt the opposite of both of those positions is largely a result of the movement following the high-status leaders, I suspect.
Two, the cruelty is really the point. Punishing the other is its own pleasure. That this was already an instinct in progressivism is most obvious when you look at the court cases against the bakers and farmers and photographers who wouldn’t participate in gay weddings. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to leave them alone, walk across the street, and give your money to another baker who actually wants it and is ideologically in your camp anyway, so why not just do that? Because the cruelty is the point, because harming the other is a pleasure to them. Why do people who, five years ago, wanted nationalized and free healthcare for everyone now want to bar the unvaccinated from doctors? Because the cruelty makes them feel good.
And three, and I know I’m a broken record on this but it’s true, but people are seeking meaning and purpose in life. I know most of the people reading this have something their life revolves around, if we can put it that way - God, or their faith, however you want to say it, or you might say there is a greater organizing framework to your life. Imagine how lost you would be if you didn’t have that, and also how easy it would be to manipulate you by making you afraid, or threatening your job say, if you didn’t have that. Well that is the way many of our neighbors were actually trying to live their lives. And now, through this health idolatry, they have found meaning and purpose. As I’ve said, it’s a really dumb meaning and purpose, but it’s something. Humans can’t live sustainably without that. Of course they’re going to sacrifice many things they sort of believed in before in order to keep it.
And four, though this is less personal and more political in character, we might say that progressivism is becoming more its true, statist, technocratic self. Of course statists believe the state should make healthcare choices for you, this whole “her body her choice” stuff is really yesterday’s progressivism still hanging around for a little bit. Of course statists believe in strict border controls, although we might temporarily relax them for certain groups in the interest of increasing our power over the longer term. Of course, even, statists prefer Big Corporate, which tends to be amoral and just wants to make more money and is happy to be buddy-buddy with the state to do it, against small businesses with owners who think independently and care about right and wrong and so might resist the state. Progressivism is therefore just becoming more explicitly what it already was.
THE END. But I’m conscious of the fact that I’m only scratching the surface here, so comments are especially welcome.
"The people who.... now..." is a template that used to require a decade or more (e.g. "whoah, both sides sure shifted on anti-Russian hawkishness") to be fully accurate, but now you can literally shift news stories by 365 days and find it everywhere. A story about cops beating down a septagenarian in the streets during a protest would be (and indeed was!) the focus of days of social media outrage about police brutality in 2020, but provokes little more a shoulder shrug when it happens in Austria in 2021.
The disorientation brought about by this kind of narrative churn is part of its purpose. It's a flex by the media power structures, demonstrating that they can change the rules of the game at any time in any way they way. But it trains the general public to trust authority rather than tradition, so that the New Religion becomes one more similar to a modern cult than to a historical faith community -- I'd say "Mormonism not Russian Orthodoxy", but that's horribly unfair to the Mormons I've known!
I agree that “secular societies (and progressivism) are very spiritually and psychologically unstable”. Unfortunately that does not imply that "deeply traditional, religious societies" are stable. They offer a much more fertile ground for individual human beings to achieve incredible things from solid foundation (think Bach), but things can still go very wrong (book recommendation: Vesper Stamper, A Cloud of Outrageous Blue).
What elements of our present societies are incompatible with a "deeply traditional, religious society"? Twitter? Centralized data collection and surveillance (definitely not "local surveillance" by your neighbours and the village)? The concept of a profile (cf the discussion of identity formation via sincerity, authenticity or profilicity, HG Moeller and Paul D'Ambrosio)?