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The unapologetic face of totalitarianism

Lin Jinyue, designer of China’s totalitarian social credit system explain how it would have prevented Gilets Jaunes & any other protests.

(via Alan Miller)

24 comments to The unapologetic face of totalitarianism

  • bob sykes

    We can expect the various regimes in the West to implement these ideas as soon as possible. Google, FaceBook, Twitter, et al. have already started the process.

  • Fraser Orr

    Just a thought on this: when it comes to big organizations they find themselves in this tension. On the one hand their size gives them power, the power that comes from economies of scale and the ability to buy favors For example, lobbyists, or large farms of lawyers for various purposes, including the generation of patents. But on the other hand their size makes them sclerotic, when any decision goes through layers and layers of management then the consequences of decisions are dissipated and lost in individual’s agenda. The cost of communication is proportional at least to the square of the number of people involved. “Office politics” is in fact the mechanism (or at least one of the main ones) that limits the growth of large companies.

    So the vast power of large organizations is heavily tempered by the limits of their intrinsic inefficiency. It is why large corporations spin off small organizations like Skunkworks etc, or buy innovation from start ups — because their normal processes are too sclerotic to actually be productive.

    However, companies like Google and Amazon have solved that conundrum. How? Massive data science. The people near the top normally are limited in their information processing capacity by the amount of info they can handle — and what they are fed is information from their underlings who spin it to their advantage. With massive data science these people near the top now have access to VAST amounts of information that is largely free of these personal agendas. And so data science dramatically reduces the aforementioned sclerosis.

    This is no less true of totalitarian regimes. They have, throughout history, been unbelievably brutal but also breathtakingly inefficient. As they too leverage these tools of massive data science they can reduce their inefficiencies and become even worse.

    FWIW, all this talk of AI taking over the world like skynet — I think it is mistaken. However, this, what I have just described, is the huge downside of readily available modern massive data analysis.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    “Office politics” is in fact the mechanism (or at least one of the main ones) that limits the growth of large companies.

    How exactly are you defining “growth of large companies”?

  • Paul Marks

    In the United States the Social Credit system is to be called the ESG (Environment and Social Governance) system – and it is to operate indirectly.

    Banks and financial services companies must judge potential customers on the basis of whether they (the customers – employers) follow certain doctrines (on just about everything) and either lend money or not, and allow financial services, or not – on the basis of the ESG score. Individuals are to be controlled through their employers and via financial transactions.

    In this way government will be able to pretend that it still respects the 1st Amendment and other fundamental liberties – whilst destroying them.

    As it will be “private companies” that do the dirty work.

    But the major corporations are eager to do all this anyway – the banks may say they are being “forced” by the Federal authorities, but the banks are controlled by totalitarians (by the “Woke”) and so are the other corporations.

    And a handful of corporations control the economy – partly due to the endless funny money from the Federal Reserve and the Credit Bubble (pet) banks, and partly due to the Covid lockdowns, and the endless regulations.

    Contrary to Marxism – concentration of income and wealth into a few hands is not a natural process, Western governments and allied banks and financial services enterprises have had to work very hard to artificially create this state-of-affairs.

    The evil (and they are evil) people who control the Biden-Harris Administration and the Corporations who “fortified” the election (Mr Z of Facebook alone spent half a BILLION Dollars manipulating voting and vote counting) hate and despise such things as the Bill of Rights (which they regard as “crime speak”).

    They look with envy on the system of People’s Republic of China.

    I make no apology for repeating the words of George Orwell again.

    If you want to know what the future the international establishment (government and corporate – and there is really no difference, as the officials of both are “educated” in the same places and in the same totalitarian doctrines) want will be like…..

    Imagine a human face, with a boot stamping down on it – for ever.

    That is what they want, and that is what they are working to create.

  • Paul Marks

    What Frasor Orr means by the “office politics of large companies” is what is called “diseconomies of scale” – yes there are diseconomies of scale, not just economies of scale.

    This is why in a free market income and wealth are NOT concentrated in a tiny number of hands.

    But this is not a free market – this is a system where vast amounts of money are created from NOTHING and are dished out to a circle of corporations and individuals (the Cantillon effect – but on an epic scale).

    And it is a system where REGULATIONS strangle small enterprises. The lockdowns (designed to concentrate economic clout in fewer hands) were just the final attack on liberty, destroying so many of what was left of independent enterprises in many American States (and elsewhere).

    Or perhaps not the final attack – as the “Green” attack on ordinary people continues, just as the Covid excuse seems to be wearing thin. People may finally be noticing that “a couple of weeks to flatten the curve” has been going on for the best part of TWO YEARS – and even mass vaccination does not seem to “getting us back to normal”, for there must be a “new normal” (i.e. endless controls for ever) not building things back the way they were, but “building back BETTER” (my emphasise) in a “Great Reset” (as Dr Schwab puts it in his latest totalitarian “stakeholder capitalism” Fascist work).

    And there will be no protests against the “Green” taxes and regulations – on the contrary there will be massive protests that the taxes and regulations are not-going-far-enough.

    It is worth noting that this system of “stakeholder” totalitarianism goes back long before the C02 is causing Global Warming theory – after all Dr Klaus Schwab’s book on “Stakeholder Capitalism” (where he first set out his Corporate State, Fascist, vision) was published in 1971.

    Everyone who has been involved with such things as the World Economic Forum over the years has no real excuse for claiming not to know of the totalitarian agenda. The WEF made no secret of the totalitarian agenda – and neither did the United Nations (Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030).

    It was out in the open – “you will own nothing, and you will be happy”. You will be conditioned to be happy – remember these people, in so far as they follow philosophy at all, follow the ideas of people such as Thomas Hobbes and David Hume – they reject the whole concept of the human soul, the “I”, and so have no problem with the idea that people should be conditioned, programmed, to be happy.

    There was no conspiracy – I repeat, it was out in the open.

    Two centuries ago Saint Simon and his followers explained a Collectivist system where big business types would NOT be shot – on the contrary the big business types (especially Credit Bubble bankers creating money-from-NOTHING) would be in charge of the Collectivist system. And all in the name of SCIENCE.

    Again – this is not a conspiracy, it has always been out in the open.

    It is not the fault of Dr Schwab and his associates if other people said to themselves “they can not be serous – it is just jolly conferences in Switzerland”.

    They said what they were going to do, and they did it.

  • Paul Marks

    The Social Housing point is important.

    If people do not own their own homes and have no Real Savings of cash-money (actual commodity money, such as gold or silver), and do not have their own source of income (are dependent on government money or employment by a handful of vast corporations) then the system, government and allied Corporations (such as the Credit Bubble banks) have them by the throat.

    Essentially political or cultural dissent would lead to death by starvation.

    In the West (although not in China) the dissenter would be condemned as a racist, sexist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe. Such a person has no rights – all of enlightened “liberal” opinion would agree.

    That should cover just about all the bases.

  • Flubber

    So Paul whar are our choices?

    We stay – and become Untermensch
    We go – where?
    We fight – we become white supremacist terrorists?

    Really not liking my options here, nor their chances of ever having any peace.

  • Fraser Orr

    @Shlomo Maistre
    How exactly are you defining “growth of large companies”?

    I’m not sure what your question is. It means the increase in revenue and profitability of corporations who already have large revenues and profitability.

    @Flubber
    Really not liking my options here, nor their chances of ever having any peace.

    I certainly sympathize with your dilemma, it is something I have struggled with too. However, I’d recommend a VERY old book, called “How I found freedom in an unfree world”, by Harry Browne. In it he attacks what is the premise of your question — namely that the way to find happiness of contentment in life is by changing the government. Rather what we have to do is recognize that the government is a constant pest, attacking us, eating at our income, stealing our savings. It is inevitable and there is really nothing that you can do about it. So rather the solution is to find ways to eliminate or minimize the government’s interaction with you.

    What does that mean? Maybe stop watching the news is a good start. It’ll just upset you because you’ll see a lot of disturbing stuff, and will be powerless to do anything about it.

    Second, arrange your affairs in such a way as to minimize how much the government takes from you.

    Third, consider your options as to where you live. Our own @Bobby b has set a precedent here by wandering from his native Minnesota to some of the cowboy states like the Dakotas and Montana. I have limited options here because of children and divorce, but I’d certainly have Florida on my radar.

    Fourth, consider technology. There are lots of technological solutions to manage your risk, whether from privacy to government snooping, to banking to money. Maybe it is time to move on from your free email account to one where you pay a small fee for your privacy. Or perhaps a VPN is in order? Maybe consider crypto currency (and certainly eschew the government run ones — what a joke that is). Learn how to use Tor. Learn how to use encryption. Consider banking offshore (FACTA reduces the benefit of that, but it’ll be very hard to have foreign banks participate in Biden’s more recent insanity. And BTW, to be clear I do NOT recommend evading your taxes — that is a sure road to prison. Rather arrange your affairs in such a way as to minimize your legal taxes.) Start your own blog and use that instead of social media. Avoid putting all your stuff “in the cloud”.

    That is just off the top of my head. To me it is the classic Libertarian Party dilemma. Libertarians believe that government is not the solution, and so a “Libertarian Party” is almost a contradiction in terms. The government isn’t going to fix things for you. No matter the great policy ideas you might come up with, even were they enacted (which they won’t be, because Americans gave up on freedom, and the Brits gave up on freedom fifty years ago), by the time they get through the legislative process they will have been so transformed to have the opposite effect than you intended.

    So then, the first step to freedom is to give up the idea that the government is going to fix things for you. They are a parasite. They are out to get you if you are even moderately successful. Give up the fantasy that the government will fix it, and rather search out (and where they don’t exist, invent) private solutions to allow you what you seek.

  • Flubber

    Thanks for the reply Fraser. I’m in the UK so my movement choices are more limited, and my point was that the agenda is in full flow in every white nation of the west.

    Secondly I do a lot of the minimisation of contact stuff already. For example I got rid of my telly licence over ten years ago.

    However my fear is that of escalation. If we stay on the current path, gulags are not far away. The elites hate us and and to implement a plan of significant depopulation. What will they do to those who wont take the clot shot? I cant help but hear the echoes of the Russian revolution.

  • Fraser Orr

    @flubber
    What will they do to those who wont take the clot shot?

    By “clot shot” I presume you mean the Covid vaccine? Assuming that it doesn’t offer any value, a premise which I doubt, but let’s go with it. I think it is an illustrative example. Let’s imagine a time in the future where you couldn’t get a job or run a business or buy groceries without one. Let’s say all political activism has failed. What then? Well the goal is not to have perfect government, or fix it through government, rather it is to live your best life. So you have to weigh the risks. On the one hand the certainty of poverty and starvation, and on the other the small risk of side effects of a vaccine, having to eat a shit sandwich and give up a bit of your sense of “doing what is right”. I can’t tell you what to do, but in those circumstances I’d definitely take the shot, and try to make a good decision about which one to take.

    You gotta chose which hill you want to die on.

  • You gotta chose which hill you want to die on.

    If this is not the hill you are willing to die on, there is no hill you are actually willing to die on.

    I am antibody positive, yet I am getting pressure from my GP to get vaxxed anyway. Yet there are many non-fringe papers suggesting me getting vaxxed means I may well be *reducing* my immunity. My other half is T-Cell immune. Her getting vaxxed put her at risk of ADE.

    This is without a doubt the hill I am planning to die on. I will quite literally do anything not to comply. Anything.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    By “clot shot” I presume you mean the Covid vaccine? Assuming that it doesn’t offer any value, a premise which I doubt, but let’s go with it. I think it is an illustrative example. Let’s imagine a time in the future where you couldn’t get a job or run a business or buy groceries without one. Let’s say all political activism has failed. What then? Well the goal is not to have perfect government, or fix it through government, rather it is to live your best life. So you have to weigh the risks. On the one hand the certainty of poverty and starvation, and on the other the small risk of side effects of a vaccine, having to eat a shit sandwich and give up a bit of your sense of “doing what is right”. I can’t tell you what to do, but in those circumstances I’d definitely take the shot, and try to make a good decision about which one to take.

    You gotta chose which hill you want to die on.

    This dude has literally no idea what’s happening. Sad!

    1. The vaccine shot is not where this ends
    2. The boosters (2 or 3 every year in perpetuity until you die) is not where this ends
    3. The lockdowns is not where this ends
    4. The global QR passports that the WEF, UN, WHO, and the rest of the crowd are pushing is not where this ends
    5. The global passports that control your right to travel, movement, employment, picking your kids up from school, opening a business, getting a loan, etc is not where this ends
    6. The global passports storing digitally all your money, your health records, your vaccination status, your criminal history, your social credit score, your habits, your personal relationships is not where this ends

    There are two classes emerging: super rich/globalists/eventually transhumans and the rest of us chumps.

    Taking the shot is not ONLY about you and it’s not only about now. It’s about politics. It’s about what is happening. It’s about obedience. It’s about where things are going. It’s about your grandchildren’s freedoms.

    Taking the shot is trading away not only your future liberty but the liberty of all humanity for… what?

    The supermarkets and stores around me still have stickers where people can stand in line six feet apart. Why?

    What day of 15 days to slow the spread are we on, exactly? 575 or so?

  • Fraser Orr

    @Perry de Havilland (London)
    This is without a doubt the hill I am planning to die on. I will quite literally do anything not to comply. Anything.

    Like I said, you have to choose which hill you wanna die on, and that might well be yours. Someone recently asked me if I thought vaccines should be mandatory. I replied “Vaccines? I don’t even think income tax should be mandatory.” Nonetheless, income tax is not a hill I want to die on either. Hills I die on are more to do with my children than anything else. However, I certainly respect your decision, and wish you good luck with it.

  • Flubber

    Hills I die on are more to do with my children than anything else.

    Ok, so what are you going to do when the state mandates the vaccination of your kids?

    I mean so what if they get ill or die from myocarditis?

  • Fraser Orr

    @Shlomo Maistre
    I seem to be butting heads with you a lot here, which is strange, since I imagine were you and I in the pub shooting the shit we’d probably agree about the large majority of things. Nonetheless, I’m going to modify slightly what you said and see if you still agree with yourself. My changes are in bold.

    1. The income tax is not where this ends
    2. The new taxes and tax increases are not where this ends
    3. The national insurance premium is not where this ends
    4. The forcing financial reports on you by your employer and banks, and the rest of the crowd are pushing is not where this ends
    5. The imprisoning for tax fraud that control your right to travel, movement, employment, picking your kids up from school, opening a business, getting a loan, etc is not where this ends
    6. The comprehansive financial reporting storing digitally all your money, your health records, … your criminal history, your social credit score, your habits, your personal relationships is not where this ends

    There are two classes emerging: super rich/globalists/eventually transhumans and the rest of us chumps. The chumps pay their taxes the rest avoid them.

    Complying with the current tax regulations is not ONLY about you and it’s not only about now. It’s about politics. It’s about what is happening. It’s about obedience. It’s about where things are going. It’s about your grandchildren’s freedoms.

    Complying with the current tax regulations is trading away not only your future liberty but the liberty of all humanity for… what?

    I imagine you pay your taxes not because you think they are justified, but because you think the risk of not doing so is too large. Me too. If you think that paying your taxes can’t make you sick or kill you, I’d point out that poverty and its side effects are far and away the most common cause of premature death.

    So like I say, choose which hill you want to die on. You’ll have my respect if you stand up for what you believe in and take the consequences. But don’t delude yourself in thinking that you haven’t made that self same trade already to keep the government off your back.

  • Fraser Orr

    @Flubber
    Ok, so what are you going to do when the state mandates the vaccination of your kids?

    Fortunately, I have not been put into that position yet. So I don’t know what I’ll do should that situation arise. I might, for example, move to Florida where such a mandate is much less likely (and where, ironically, I’d pay less income taxes.)

  • Paul Marks

    Flubber – Economic Law will destroy them.

    Contrary to Gustave Von Schmoller (and all the rest) Economic Law does exist – and it will destroy their Collectivist dream.

    However, the end will be terrible – and many innocent people will die, die of such things as hunger and disease, and in civil disorder.

    Your duty Flubber is to try to survive, protect who you can, and rebuild when you can.

    The times will be hard, very hard. But the bad times will NOT last for every – things will get better.

    I will not live to see it – but things will get better.

  • bobby b

    For some demographics, the vaxxes have value. The stupidity of government mandating those vaxxes for demographics for which they have negative value doesn’t change that fact.

    Assume you need insulin to live. Then the government orders you to take it. Does the good libertarian continue to take it, or stop and die on principle? If you stop taking it in reaction to the government order, you’re handing government as much power as you do when you take it because of their order. The proper reaction is to ignore government and continue judging the insulin on its own merits vis-a-vis your own body.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Fraser Orr,

    @Shlomo Maistre
    I seem to be butting heads with you a lot here, which is strange, since I imagine were you and I in the pub shooting the shit we’d probably agree about the large majority of things. Nonetheless, I’m going to modify slightly what you said and see if you still agree with yourself. My changes are in bold.

    1. The income tax is not where this ends
    2. The new taxes and tax increases are not where this ends
    3. The national insurance premium is not where this ends
    4. The forcing financial reports on you by your employer and banks, and the rest of the crowd are pushing is not where this ends
    5. The imprisoning for tax fraud that control your right to travel, movement, employment, picking your kids up from school, opening a business, getting a loan, etc is not where this ends
    6. The comprehansive financial reporting storing digitally all your money, your health records, … your criminal history, your social credit score, your habits, your personal relationships is not where this ends

    There are two classes emerging: super rich/globalists/eventually transhumans and the rest of us chumps. The chumps pay their taxes the rest avoid them.

    Complying with the current tax regulations is not ONLY about you and it’s not only about now. It’s about politics. It’s about what is happening. It’s about obedience. It’s about where things are going. It’s about your grandchildren’s freedoms.

    Complying with the current tax regulations is trading away not only your future liberty but the liberty of all humanity for… what?

    I imagine you pay your taxes not because you think they are justified, but because you think the risk of not doing so is too large. Me too. If you think that paying your taxes can’t make you sick or kill you, I’d point out that poverty and its side effects are far and away the most common cause of premature death.

    So like I say, choose which hill you want to die on. You’ll have my respect if you stand up for what you believe in and take the consequences. But don’t delude yourself in thinking that you haven’t made that self same trade already to keep the government off your back.

    I do imagine that if we were in a pub we would enjoy the banter and agree on most things, broadly speaking.

    I think you underestimate and misunderstand the threat we are now facing. Here are a few of the differences between the income tax and the magic jab:
    1. The income tax does not violate your bodily autonomy
    2. The income tax is not an injection into your body
    3. The income tax mandate was passed by Congress, the magic jab mandate was not passed by Congress
    4. Not paying the income tax is a violation of law; not getting the magic jab is NOT a violation of no law
    5. Pre-covid 19 nobody stopped me prior to me entering a bar or restaurant or store or movie theater or hospital to check to see if I have evidence that I have been paying my income taxes. Now I am stopped at every bar, restaurant, movie theater, hospital, store, etc that I try to enter by someone checking that I have taken the magic injection into my body. If I haven’t I am denied entry.
    6. Corporations did not implement mandates requiring their employees to provide evidence that they paid their income taxes in order to remain employed at that company; many corporations are already implementing mandates requiring employees to provide evidence that they have received their injections in order to remain employed at that company
    7. If someone is fired for not paying income taxes he is able to collect unemployment benefits. If someone is fired for not getting these injections into his body, then he is unable to collect unemployment benefits.
    8. The income tax does not violate the HIPAA

    Do I need to go on?

    There are so many differences. Fundamental differences in nature between the income tax and these injections. Comparing the two is absolutely absurd on every fucking level.

    Getting these shots, whether you like it or not, is acquiescing to the illegal precedents, unconstitutional precedents, and immoral precedents being set today.
    1. No more bodily autonomy
    2. Citizens enforcing mandates at the entrances of hospitals, bars, restaurants, churches, stores, etc. (segregation and medical apartheid enforced by the employees of stores, bars etc)
    3. No law being passed by Congress. All this shit is being done by government bureaucracies and corporations working together
    4. Already millions of people have forced out of their jobs for not taking injections that did not exist 12 months ago
    5. All major Big Tech and media companies demonizing, censoring, disappearing, smearing, and ignoring dissenting scientists and doctors and preventing any meaningful discussion of the actual science from happening in public

    These precedents may not seem that bad to you right now.

    But mark my words.

    These precedents will be used against our great grandchildren in ways that will make our worst nightmares seem like joyful and happy experiences by comparison.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    4. Not paying the income tax is a violation of law; not getting the magic jab is NOT a violation of no law

    Should say:
    4. Not paying the income tax is a violation of law; not getting the magic jab is NOT a violation of law

  • Fraser Orr

    @Shlomo Maistre
    There are so many differences. Fundamental differences in nature between the income tax and these injections. Comparing the two is absolutely absurd on every fucking level.

    I am sorry, I perhaps didn’t communicate my point very well. Of course vaccination and income tax are different, but mandated vaccines and mandated income tax are the same in one regard[*]: I don’t want to comply, but I do comply anyway because the risk to me personally from NOT complying is substantially greater than the risk of complying. I’m not trying to make some sort of political martyr of myself by refusing to file my 1040. Brave people might do that, or might refuse the vaccine in face of overwhelming pressure. However, much as I reject both mandates, I choose to spend my bravery on other subjects.

    [*] In a context where the vaccine is mandated, and with the premise, that I don’t necesarily accept, that they are an unadulterated bad.

    Getting these shots, whether you like it or not, is acquiescing to the illegal precedents, unconstitutional precedents, and immoral precedents being set today.

    Sure, but about 99% of what the federal government does is unconstitutional and based on illegal principles, and much of it is immoral too. Yet you seem to acquiesce to that? I assume you don’t refuse to use the federal highway system, or refuse to get on an airplane because of the outrageous TSA, or campaign to have your kid’s school refuse money from the Department of Education. You even mentioned federally subsidized unemployment benefits, yet I struggle to put my finger on the line of the constitution that authorizes that.

    If you are in the UK, I am sure we can come up with a list of all the many, many things the government does that it shouldn’t. Yet we acquiesce to that too.

    Like I say, you have to choose which hill you plan to die on. Failing to pay your income taxes is far more likely to cause dire problems in your life than the Covid shot. But if that is the issue on which you wish to plant your flag, I applaud you.

  • Paul Marks

    The idea that political involvement is pointless is mistaken. For example, some American State Governors did NOT impose lockdowns. If you do not engage in politics – it ensures that your enemies control the police and (at national level) the armed forces. Those who refuse the Sword of State do not abolish the Sword of State (as they fondly believe) – they hand the Sword to their enemies.

    It is difficult to reduce government spending and regulations by politics – but it is not impossible, whereas the idea that armed revolts that can do so leads to certain defeat. Even in the teeth of the Great Depression of the late 1930s a Governor South Dakota reduced government spending, which led to getting rid of the State Income Tax. He did not do so by leading an armed revolt – but by winning an election.

    Indeed many of these “anti government groups” who teach that they can use their weapons to roll back the state are infiltrated by the FBI – they are, de facto, False Flag organisations (although most of their members do not know that).

    “But Paul, many of the people who promise to reduce government spending are liars – what is the point of voting for them?”

    Are they? Or they people, such as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who never promised any such thing in the first place? He did not break his promise to reduce government spending – because he never made any such promise.

    If you want leaders who want to reduce the size and scope of government – then support them, support them at the stage that CANDIDATES are selected.

    “But that is too hard” – I assure you that armed revolt, defeating the armed forces in battle, would be rather harder.

    If you think that candidate selection is too hard – do not try armed revolt, which is much harder.

    Do not want Covid lockdowns or “Climate Emergency” lockdowns? Then get involved in selecting candidates – so that you have a candidate to vote for who OPPOSES such things.

    And, yes, I do practice what I preach.

  • Shlomo Maistre

    Fraser Orr,

    @Shlomo Maistre
    There are so many differences. Fundamental differences in nature between the income tax and these injections. Comparing the two is absolutely absurd on every fucking level.

    I am sorry, I perhaps didn’t communicate my point very well. Of course vaccination and income tax are different, but mandated vaccines and mandated income tax are the same in one regard[*]: I don’t want to comply, but I do comply anyway because the risk to me personally from NOT complying is substantially greater than the risk of complying.

    Scroll up. Read what I said in my comment on October 24, 2021 at 5:59 pm. And then read how you replied on October 24, 2021 at 6:59 pm.

    Obviously, in your reply on October 24, 2021 at 6:59 pm you were comparing the magic COVID-19 jab and the income tax by saying they are both bad things you objected to, but that is NOT the only way you compared the two. In your reply on October 24, 2021 at 6:59 pm you ALSO specifically compared the magic COVID-19 jab and the income tax by insinuating that my objections to the magic COVID-19 jab are also applicable to the income tax, which is absurd, false, and incorrect. My objections to the magic COVID-19 jab do not apply AT ALL to the income tax.

    You will comply with both. Yes we agree they are both bad things.

  • My contribution to this thread is qualified by my not being in the US. Commenters who are, feel free to correct my far-side-of-pond impressions.

    Here in the UK, the attempt to nullify democracy over Brexit failed. Our government in Westminster is the true winner of the last election on lawfully-counted votes, for all that its current behaviour is open to certain criticisms. (Niall Kilmartin’s rule is: when speaking of the government in England, use English understatement. For one thing, it means I can express myself more emphatically about the subsidiary in Scotland without danger of foaming at the mouth. 🙂 )

    In the US, today’s federal government is a usurpation, a soft coup, a coup whose managing cabal seeks not to speak its name (at least, not too loudly). Although not-so-dissimilar phenomena are well-known in the last century’s history, I see (granted, perhaps my hopes encourage me to see) some problems in the modern methods of this latest example.

    Many state governments in the US are legitimate and not on-side with what is happening. More generally, US governmental forms and practices still provide, as they were designed to, many obstacles to the usurpers.

    Successful practitioners in the past sometimes acted late in a time of economic downturn, when the luck of ordinary events would give their early years an impression of improvement and competence. Today, after nine months, it is not clear to me that this impression has being conveyed, or is likely to be in the coming year.

    Having the loyalty of (and/or arranging the swift replacement of, or swamping of) the police and military was important in past cases. In today’s US, cancel culture (and prosecutorial/judicial discretion, where the cabal has it available), does a lot that those groups would do in the past, but it has its limits. Some police just obey (any) orders but it’s not obvious to me that the enthusiasm gap created by the politics of defund and defeat can be either bridged or skipped.

    Specifically, vax mandates can serve as purge tools, but when police fired by one state or city can be (and, if I understand reports correctly, are being) hired by another, or refuse, led by their union, in numbers that challenge governance, then the method could backfire. (So as regards the recent part of the thread, I’d say such vax-mandate defiance in such key constituencies has a wider interest to us than the issue of who does or does not take the vaccine of their own free will. I posted recently on somewhat similar potentialities in the parents-are-terrorists issue. These issues, and others, could combine.)

    Thus it seems to me that (for over a year at the minimum), the cabal must avoid heating the situation to the point where the role of physical enforcers (e.g. low-level police and public acquiescence, etc.) becomes more needful to them than that of (cancel) culture, while simultaneously employing vote fraud on a yet larger scale (geographically as well as numerically) than late last year and also both extending and firming-up their institutional control.

    As regards vote-fraud, I note that (AFAICS – feel free to correct me if you know better) the California recall election had obvious vote fraud but is being taken by us as a genuine Dem victory in which the margin of victory was faked but not the result. IIRC, Virginia in November 2020 was described as “the biggest vote-fraud story you’ve never heard” for similar reasons – it was not clear that the fraud actually changed the state’s electoral college assignment. It will be interesting to see how much the upcoming election there will or won’t tell us. In the ordinary trend of political events, the midterms should be a major obstacle to the cabal – but in the ordinary trend of political events, Trump’s second term should be being a major obstacle to the cabal.

    As regards the rest, well, Burke told anxious Frenchmen who sought his advice during their anything-but-soft revolution that “Reason can always be hazarded” – i.e. that daring to argue could be risky to them personally but was consistently a lesser risk to their cause than silence – but acting could have less one-sided effects since, while your being the start of a preference cascade is the risk your opponents fear, “Failed attempts disgrace their perpetrators” – by discrediting later better attempts before the latter can start. And when they beseeched wise Monsieur Burke to advise them which proposals fell on which side of the line, Burke replied he must “see with my own eyes, feel with my own hands as it were”, must talk face-to-face with the people concerned (with any Babski Bunty-ers or whatever) in their own locale, before he could judge. So, being in Britain, not revolutionary France – where at times mere possession of his book brought a death sentence – he could not offer advice of that kind. They had to figure that one out themselves. (Unhelpful advice, but none the less true for that.)

    Meanwhile (in any remaining ‘meanwhile’ there is), I suggest commenters not let any being-contained energy spill over into being too harsh with each other in threads. Just a thought.