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Random notes.
2020-09-08 06:41Wasn't that long ago, I made fun of conspiracy nuts. These days, I buy ALCOA wrap according to my hat size. Times change.
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Authoritarians love "states of emergency" because then all normal constraints and expectations are waived. Day-to-day technical and managerial competence is no longer scrutinized because "it's an emergency!" Any kind of action, no matter how ill-advised, can be justified because it's "doing something".
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If you take 50 random people off the street, and you want to find out which ones are alcoholics, invite them all into a bar and buy them each ONE drink. And then watch to see what happens. Because some people can't stop at just one.
Those 50 people are the 50 state governors. The COVID-19 crisis gave them their first taste of unchecked, raw, 200-proof power. And we saw which ones got drunk on it.
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The Covid scare campaign (as distinct from the virus itself, which nobody disputes is very real) appeals to a certain strain of vanity: the conviction that "I am among the selfless few, bearing the burden for an ungrateful and ignorant humanity".
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The "new normal" needs to be a Big Government that has been de-fanged, de-clawed, and neutered.
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There's a deliberate strategy to decouple moral reasoning from the objective, observable consequences of your actions. Global warming, pandemic masks. It's so that your sense of guilt can be properly manipulated.
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'Thus the principle of the unity of humanity, so noble in theory, rapidly divides mankind into two camps: those who are regarded as favoring the good of mankind, in they adopt the empire's categories for determining what is beneficial and right; and those who are regarded as opposing the good of mankind, in that they insist on thinking in terms of the customary categories of the tribe, which the empire invariably condemns as primitive and barbaric.' - Yoram Hazony
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Authoritarians love "states of emergency" because then all normal constraints and expectations are waived. Day-to-day technical and managerial competence is no longer scrutinized because "it's an emergency!" Any kind of action, no matter how ill-advised, can be justified because it's "doing something".
*
If you take 50 random people off the street, and you want to find out which ones are alcoholics, invite them all into a bar and buy them each ONE drink. And then watch to see what happens. Because some people can't stop at just one.
Those 50 people are the 50 state governors. The COVID-19 crisis gave them their first taste of unchecked, raw, 200-proof power. And we saw which ones got drunk on it.
*
The Covid scare campaign (as distinct from the virus itself, which nobody disputes is very real) appeals to a certain strain of vanity: the conviction that "I am among the selfless few, bearing the burden for an ungrateful and ignorant humanity".
*
The "new normal" needs to be a Big Government that has been de-fanged, de-clawed, and neutered.
*
There's a deliberate strategy to decouple moral reasoning from the objective, observable consequences of your actions. Global warming, pandemic masks. It's so that your sense of guilt can be properly manipulated.
*
'Thus the principle of the unity of humanity, so noble in theory, rapidly divides mankind into two camps: those who are regarded as favoring the good of mankind, in they adopt the empire's categories for determining what is beneficial and right; and those who are regarded as opposing the good of mankind, in that they insist on thinking in terms of the customary categories of the tribe, which the empire invariably condemns as primitive and barbaric.' - Yoram Hazony
