You've failed to make the case that the government is not a "bad actor". They've used all sorts of manufactured consensus techniques to get us into unjust wars or to give up our liberties (i.e. mass surveillance, lockdowns, etc) for over-blown threats. We aren't going to get education from the government. Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda.
The government isn’t a magic entity or intelligent AI that wants or doesn’t want things. The government is people. And a certain breed of people are magnetically attracted to power, which is part of human nature that goes back to the beginning of humanity. The benefit leaders get out of lockdowns is power, which regardless of its legitimacy or necessity is one of the most intoxicating and addictive things on Earth.
(1) Identification of potential dissidents. Those who violate lockdowns or mask orders are most likely to resist state control.
(2) Normalizing control over common activities. It takes four weeks to normalize a new habit. "Two weeks to stop the spread" has been going on since March (that's thirty-two weeks and counting). Americans are now habituated to state-controlled social behaviors.
(3) Destruction of in-person social channels outside the sphere of state electronic surveillance.
(4) Normalizing fear of non-conformists ("you're killing grandpa").
(5) Destruction of non-sanctioned economies. Global companies have effectively been part of the state for decades, and can easily weather the storm. Smaller businesses can not, which dries up cashflow outside of state-approved channels.
I don't think that really holds up. I'm in a part of Australia that had a lockdown and we've rolled back most of the restrictions because we're successfully basically eliminated the virus in our state (in the community that is - we have a few cases in quarantine of people arriving internationally every couple of days).
The feeling is that people want to get back to normal, but understand that most of the regulations were necessary given the seriousness of the pandemic. I feel absolutely no sense that people are more willing to submit to Government control now or anything like that, and it's the same even talking to people down in Victoria that had a big second wave and way longer lockdown than we did. Their willingness to comply was to stop the spread of the virus so they could get out of lockdown, and it worked, and now the restrictions are being rolled back.
It's frustrating to hear people in the media here crowing on about 'authoritarianism' and 'government control' over this, especially because the State Governments that are in charge of pandemic restrictions have demonstrated little desire to maintain restrictions longer than was sensible given the virus. But at the same time, these conservative commentators who are aligned with our right-wing Federal Government happily ignore actual authoritarian, draconian laws that the Feds are passing to give police and intelligence services unprecedented powers for warrantless mass surveillance etc. over the last decade...
I'd even go as far as saying that the pandemic would actually be a really bad time for a Government to try and 'normalise' increased government control, because there's no legitimate or logical reason to maintain it once the pandemic is over (if we get a vaccine for instance). The desire to throw off all the restrictions once the virus is gone is just too strong.
First: thank you for replying, and not just downvoting.
> The feeling is that people want to get back to normal, but understand that most of the regulations were necessary given the seriousness of the pandemic.
It is highly debatable that lockdowns ever were, or currently are, either necessary or effective.
> State Governments that are in charge of pandemic restrictions have demonstrated little desire to maintain restrictions longer than was sensible given the virus.
The US is in the thirty-second week of "two weeks to stop the spread".
Credibility went right out the window when the powers-that-be decreed weddings and funerals as too risky, but protests and riots as totally fine.
Not to mention the long list of politicians whose personal lives seem to be an exception from the rules they have imposed on others.
> There's no legitimate or logical reason to maintain it once the pandemic is over.
I remember airports before 9/11. Hell, I remember the US before 9/11.
The ironically-named Patriot Act represented a massive seizure of power and a wholesale trampling of American civil rights. None of the airport security measures introduced were necessary or effective, and yet they continue to this day.
Since 9/11, the United States has been at war in the Middle East for twenty years, squandering trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to achieve... nothing.
This was neither legitimate nor logical. But it did make a bunch of politicians and their friends very powerful and very wealthy.
I also remember, at the time, the moral frenzy that enveloped the nation after the fall of the twin towers.
I keep asking people to explain why they downvote posts like yours and nobody wants to. I guess they know the reasons aren't good, they just can't help giving in to the desire for control.
Beautiful list though and well said. I've been trying to think of a succinct way to summarize some of those concepts and I think you've broken them up well.
Some people debate the ROI of pandemic controls. Also, not all lockdowns are pandemic lockdowns. There have also been curfews unrelated to the pandemic and in some cases predating it.
Yeah, another 9/11 was basically stopped by adding locked compartments and training the pilots in self-defense techniques, some of which are even armed.
Not disagreeing with most of what you're saying here, just wondering if you mean manufactured consent, like the Herman and Chomsky book, not consensus.
You've failed to make the case that the government is not a "bad actor".
I think a close reading of the OP would show they aren't portraying the state with great friendliness. Some run the show for the benefit of powerful forces and to various extents try to think about long term goals. "Bad Actors" is a decent shorthand for group trying also serving the wealthy and themselves but with a destructively short term agenda.
The key point the GP makes and I think you're missing is that stop manipulation isn't a matter of removing "tyrants" but creating an active, educated population.
> Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda.
I think "cure" is too strong a word; certainly it is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient. (See: the state of most debate and discussion.) I don't know what would be a cure, or even if that's even possible. Censorship definitely seems to be the wrong approach. Since it's hard to improve what you can't measure, perhaps this attempt to measure censorship will be helpful.
It takes time, but it does cure it. The biggest problem with censorship is it locks a state into conservatism. What is conservative now was liberal 20-50 years ago. When you censor new ideas, you're stuck 20-50 years ago.
. . . for example: "open debate" will accomplish nothing, if we are continually spending time debating whether or not racism and genocide are immoral. We fought wars over this.
I am very much for "free speech" - but at some point, you have to shut certain topics out of reasonable debate, because at the end of the day, if we have to keep debating things like this, we've learned nothing.
You're not really for free speech if you're arguing that any topic is off limits. Sometimes even playing the devil's advocate for a "bad" topic can be illuminating and can help strengthen and deepen your own understanding of why racism or genocide are immoral.
I don't think they were trying to make the case that the government wasn't a bad actor. I read it more to mean that they liked it better when they were the only bad actor.
