Posted on 01/24/2021 5:08:41 PM PST by george76
Now that the election is over, Democrats are trying to shift gears from pandemic theater to reopening the economy. But they're finding their own propaganda is difficult to reverse.
The reopening of the nation started up almost immediately after the 2020 election. Vaccines “miraculously” became available. The CDC and WHO started changing their recommendations. Politicians who were adamantly opposed to reopening in any form were suddenly calling for businesses and schools to open. The COVID-19 pandemic had played its role in removing President Trump from office, so now they need to reverse course and try to fix the economic mess they’ve created.
What they’re finding is that their propaganda and fearmongering for the previous ten months was not easily reversed. For example:
Breaking: Chicago Teachers Union members vote to defy Chicago Public Schools' reopening plans and continue working from home tomorrow because of health and safety concerns, a source says. About 86% of CTU members voted, and 71% of those members approved the collective action
— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) January 24, 2021..
This isn’t going to be as easy as saying, “Hey, let’s reopen!” They’ve hammered into the masses that reopening was dangerous, irresponsible, unkind, despicable, and anyone who said otherwise such as President Trump and most of his supporters were evil incarnate.
Most businesses will comply with reopening plans because they’re desperate. They’ve been struggling to survive through 2020 and many didn’t make it into 2021. Still, the rush to reopen now that Joe Biden is president must be done in stages. Otherwise, Democrats will appear to be contradicting themselves, which of course they are.
Schools will be the most difficult for them to open as deprogramming teachers offers a different type of challenge. American teachers are generally among the most left-leaning of groups, up there with Hollywood and mainstream media, and therefore have been the most determined to maintain lockdown status. They also tend to err on the side of caution much like medical professionals and will be the most hesitant to reverse course.
Meanwhile, more people are asking questions about the coronavirus statistics. Why are grocery stores, which see a diverse range of people within close proximity to each other on a daily basis, never the epicenter of “super spreader” incidents? How is being crammed into a plane sitting right next to someone acceptable but eating at a restaurant with your family is dangerous? Why are strip clubs open while churches are closed? How does California, with the most draconian restrictions in the nation, still seeing the largest spike of COVID-19 cases?
I believe COVID-19 is a real disease. I believe it can potentially mutate into something more dangerous in the future. But I also believe the death rate, which is already very low for people under the age of 50, is greatly exaggerated by both the government and the medical facilities that get more money for treating coronavirus patients. And I do not think the flu was magically eradicated. All of this has been carefully crafted.
Unfortunately, the powers of propaganda and fearmongering have done a real number on the country. Anecdotal examples of people going insane over others not wearing their masks properly (or not wearing them at all) are showing just how obsessed millions of Americans have become. This is part of the programming.
It’s important to note that the left does not want a complete reversal of the fear. They need to get the economy opened back up so they can say Democratic leadership brought us from the edge of the abyss, but they still enjoy the spoils of authoritarianism. They’re going for the critical mix of a recovering economy and government dependency. In their plan, which is part of The Great Reset, they cannot allow the economy to collapse just yet. That comes later. For now, they need things to approach getting back to the new normal they envision in which government dependency is widespread, fueled by their crony powerbrokers who will keep the economy afloat for as long as necessary.
They wanted us terrified. Their efforts paid off before the election as millions were made to believe compliance was the only way to survive. Now Democrats are having a hard time getting people to release their irrational fears.
No problem.
The core base for the Democrat Party has a memory span of about six weeks.
Seriously.
The Party and its allies in the so-called “news” media, and the so-called “entertainment” industry will find something with which to divert their base. The base will forget about COVID very quickly.
Do they want to or would the prefer and endless pandemic that would make everyone dependent upon the government
They can just double down and increase their power.
Democrat tyrants love their power over their slaves.
When she got to within about fifty feet of me, she stopped dead in her tracks, a blank look of terror in her eyes. Then she tried to press her mask tighter over her face with her hand and took several steps backward to get further than fifty feet away from me. There was not another soul within 500 feet of us, I was moving away from her, and certainly didn't look threatening. She was clearly terrified of the Evil COVID Cloud that certainly must be emanating from this unmasked heretic before her.
If this is the mentality progressives have installed in their worshippers then, no, they will never be able to deprogram them. I don't think a Dr. Fauci Christmas Special, starring Cardi B and Stephen Colbert could do it.
Manhattan working day population:
I know some people so terrified of the virus that I doubt they will ever be over it.
I’ve been wondering myself how many are going to deal with reopening now that they have been so preconditioned to fear.
Yes, they love their power, and they wield it to advance their interests.
If Lord of the Rings were real, conservatives would fall all over each other to give Sauron his property back.
expect to wake up any day and hear on the radio:
"today scientists discovered a novel hole in the ozone layer, governments around the world have ordered that all fossil fuels are immediately rationed. All personal motor vehicles are banned from travel, only essential vehicles may operate"
I’ve seen the same. People driving alone in cars or walking alone in a park wearing masks. It’s just bizarre. I doubt they will ever return to normal.
Chicago Teacher’s aren’t scared, those scum just want to continue to get paid WO having to go to work.
Someone on a podcast (about health) was at a park with his kids. A woman sat down on the bench next to him & started talking. She is a grandmother & is raising 3 or 4 of her grandchildren (all small). The baby she got out of foster care & is still working with CPS on some things. She said it took months to get something done recently - CPS is “crushed”. They are telling her that “milennial” parents are so stressed out & unable to cope with the current environment with COVID, etc. that they are taking their kids to public places and abandoning them. The damage done by the political ‘fear’ pandemic is going to be pretty horrific when the full extent is known (if it ever is).
You can turn a cucumber into a pickle but not a pickle into a cucumber.
Yes, the Dems will just get the media on it and in no time at all, the Black Death of 2020 will be rewritten and forgotten.
Unless, of course, it becomes useful for them to lock us down again. Then it’s time to rev up the fear machine.
26 Dec 2020: UnHerd: Neil Ferguson interview: China changed what was possible
by Freddie Sayers
(Freddie Sayers is the Executive Editor of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome)
Professor Neil Ferguson has given an extraordinary interview to Tom Whipple at The Times, in which he confirms the degree to which he believes that imitating China’s lockdown policies at the start of 2020 changed the parameters of what Western societies consider acceptable.
“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson says. When SAGE observed the “innovative intervention” out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy:
“It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.
- Professor Neil Ferguson, The Times
He almost seems at pains to emphasise the Chinese derivation of the lockdown concept, returning to it later in the interview:
(Times excerpt) These days, lockdown feels inevitable. It was, he reminds me, anything but. “If China had not done it,” he says, “the year would have been very different.”...
https://unherd.com/thepost/neil-ferguson-interview-china-changed-what-was-possible/
2 Jan: Mail On Sunday: Peter Hitchens: Guess where Professor Lockdown got his ideas ... China’s police state
One of the strangest things about our recent national madness has been the role of Professor Neil Ferguson, the physicist who has somehow come to dominate Johnson’s Covid policy...
The professor was said to have resigned from the SAGE advisory committee. But did he? Not really.
A current State website lists him as a member of the ‘New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group’ (NERVTAG). Minutes suggest he was only ever away from that for a few weeks. But this is small potatoes, set beside an amazing admission by Ferguson in a recent interview with the semi-official newspaper The Times.
Here, Ferguson spoke of SAGE’s growing admiration for China’s tyrannical attempts to contain Covid...
I’d be interested to know how the SAGE geniuses evaluated data from this police state, which lacks a free press or independent universities. But there.
Even so, they hesitated. As Ferguson says: ‘It’s a Communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought.’
Aren’t those words ‘we couldn’t get away with it’ interesting? Is this the way in which public servants in a free country think of the normal limits on what they can do? I can only hope not.
But Ferguson and his friends then saw what happened in Italy, where a formerly free country reached for the weapons of repression and mass house arrest. And the rule of fear was so great that they got away with it. So we were next. Or, as Ferguson puts it: ‘And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’...
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2021/01/peter-hitchens-guess-where-professor-lockdown-got-his-ideas-chinas-police-state.html
A few weeks back I was in Home Depot without a mask. A few people noticed but most didn’t care. One woman said something such as ‘ you’re putting me at risk by not wearing a mask “...I replied “ not if you stay away from me “
I have found myself astonished, time and time again, at how much how many people believe all the covid hype. People of all types, from both sides, all walks of life. I mean they really bought this stuff, hook, line & sinker.
I’m not saying it was all invalid, but I am saying that a great deal of it has been BS on stilts.
Even if they opened everything up tomorrow, I’m not sure how many members of the public would show up.
And of course, I’m now ENTIRELY UNWILLING to do anything to help this nation. I’m now fully in the burn it down camp.
So I ain’t going nowhere, ain’t spending nothing. To me we’ll be remaining in a state of dire emergency for quite a while. Possibly the rest of my life, although I hope not.
I’m now fully in the burn it down camp.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.