Yeah, they basically said that in so many words.
I stumbled upon this wonderful op-ed in Aftonbladet today, the paper’s either no. 2 or the one with the highest circulation in Sweden, and is among the largest in the Nordics.
Its thesis (and I use that word lightly) is that “anti-vaxxers” (i.e. the rabid mob that hates science and wants to burn doctors at the stake to replace them with witches and snake oil salesmen) are dEsTrOYiNG DEmOCrAcY by challenging institutional authority and advocating for people to do their own research in support of informed decisions.
This apparently is a form of bona fide nihilism which actively dismantles “democracy’s institutions”, because… Well, we don’t really get an argument here, and I have a really difficult time giving you an amicable reading of this. People looking at the data by themselves somehow breaks down the core institutions of our sacred democracy, which includes every vested interest, every NGO, every media conglomerate and pharmaceutical consortium, which all are pure and holy and immune from corruption and ought never to be questioned by the dirty rabble of conceited conspiracy theorists. And how could YOU know better than the virtuous protectors at the impeccable WHO anyway?
All nonsense, of course. But it’s important nonsense, and it’s exquisitely dangerous nonsense. There’s such a fine specimen of a contradiction here, in this idiotic juxtaposition of “democracy” and the fact of common people exercising their own reason and making their own decisions, that I’m almost at a loss for words.
It’s not just that this actively reproduces the hyper-specialization of late industrial society where the rational human being is rendered nothing but a discrete function in service of the machine, where mere dissent in relation to authority is treason.
It’s that we once again see this fundamental erosion of epistemology where truth is reduced to privilege and authority. Right there’s a threat to democracy, jumping up and biting you in the ass. Do you perceive it?
Another article (I also use that word lightly) from today, piling on in the horror porn fest of the Botswana variant which certainly will render the sacred vaccines all but useless, states in no uncertain terms that the unvaccinated are to blame for the emergence of variants with immune evasion properties that reduces the efficacy of the vaccines. Sure.
So let me do some “citizen science”. Let me destroy democracy for you in a couple of sentences.
If you have a population inoculated with leaky vaccines that confer partial immunity to a virus that’s currently reproducing in said population, what variants of the virus do you think will tend to proliferate? Those that effectively evade the vaccines, or those that do not?
Is she dead yet? Lady Liberty.
“Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston.”
I read through this post that the article got under your skin...and when you drill into this, the absurdities become clear.
In any other time, we would have been able to recite the truism that thinking people are never a threat to democracy, only to authoritarian states. In fact, thinking people are ESENTIAL for a thriving democracy.
Crazy times to witness, and yet these times are the times our souls, or God, chose for us to live in. I suspect it will get worse for a time to come, I feel these dark forces in the air, and that too is part of our purpose here, now.
You meant the plantations of Boston?