Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,
How can I see an opportunity in the aftermath of such a disaster, you might well ask. Quite simply, among the mayhem of destroyed businesses, ruined childhoods and educations, the cruelties of isolation inflicted on the old and vulnerable, and the mental health crisis triggered by a two - year stream of constant, fearmongering misinformation from governments, the media, academics and business lie the ruins of trust, the essential binding that held the system together.
Look at the opinion polls conducted to asses the popularity of world leaders. They are shocking, even devastating. Boris Johnson is facing a rebellion within his own party and likely removal from office, his popularity across all polls is lower than that of any UK Prime Minister. Likewise Joe Biden, the United Staets president is looking at nearly a 12-point split between approval and
disapproval and with midterm elections coming up in November his party is panicking. In both these cases it is safe to assume the reality is even worse than polls show polling outfits have admitted for the past few years that they have to canvass up to five times as many interview candidates as they will use.
The same kind of results are being seen in France, where Macron's chances of re election hinge on his opponents shooting themselves in the foot by splitting the Eurosceptic, libertarian vote instead of uniting behind one candidate, and in Germany where a newly installed government is already struggling, Italy, Spain and Netherlands with daily protests in all these nations against authoritarian measures go almost completely ignored by mainstream media.
The people commissioning polls on public attitudes to leaders' handling of the pandemic are looking for compliance. In mid 2022 polls were being published showing 80% of respondents wanted more lockdowns, stronger restrictions and forced vaccination though an informed study of the polling data showed sample sizes were tiny and strongly skewed towards left leaning voters. A quick perusal of any lengthy internet comment thread on pandemic - related topics strongly suggested support for lockdowns and vaccine passports barely registered.
That so many
are now willing to say what they really think is encouraging.These numbers can be taken with a pinch of salt as all polling results should be, but the trend represents a sign — a slight one but one we can see — of a far
more fundamental shift in public attitudes.
What we see here is a deeply
dangerous loss of trust not only in government, but in everything,
including the medical professions, academic communities, media, experts in general, big business and banks and the justice system, alongside a growing perception that truth is no longer accessible to us.
We
are living amidst the rising of information chaos, the late stages of
what Dr.Robert Malone, inventor of the dangerous mRNA vaccine technology, has called mass formation psychosis.
cannot be known. The eventual outcome cannot be known in advance, but that something is coming and will hit
us very hard is no longer in doubt. That the globalist bid to use the pandemic and a quasi - religious promise that mass vaccination is the only saviour and none of us will be safe until we are all vaccinated may be failing, but they have invested a lot of money and their credibility in this and are not going to back off easily.
To get a feeling for the level of planning and organisation behind this manufactured crisis, consider that the nations of the developed world moved from democracy (or at least an illusion of it,) relative prosperity and contentment to a world drowning in chaos and teetering on the brink of tyranny in just two years.
And every time we thought we glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel, along came another variant, another tsunami of scaremonging propaganda and another swathe of bulllying, coercive measures aimed at crushing dissent.
And despite all the measures, the vaccinations, the lies, masks mandates, social distancing and you name it. It has all
failed. Yet the people promoting more of the same still expect us to trust them.
***********************
What’s Next?
The
pandemic will end as they always do: with the arrival of herd immunity.
That stage becomes the point at which the virus is a normal part of
life, breeding with other viruses and becoming normal and seasonal like
any sickness.
My experts tell me that we are about a month away
from that point in the Northeast, but that it has yet to make the rounds
in the South, which could be facing a tough spring and summer.
Regardless,
it comes to an end, with or without vaccination. What does not end so
easily is the statism, the monitoring, the despotism, the urge to
control, the rules, the threat that it could all happen again.
Getting
rid of the pandemic is something nature takes care of. Getting rid of
the pandemic controls and the urge to bludgeon people into compliance is
a much harder task. It will not likely be accomplished by any political
movement.
The answer is likely to be bound up with
noncompliance. Many people are already there. They are done obeying.
Many people have quit their jobs. They have moved. They have upended
their lives in shocking ways. They have completely rethought their
relationships to civic institutions and leaders. And they are ready for
something entirely new.
The psychologist who is the world’s
leading scholar on mass formation psychosis said something interesting
in a recent interview. He is Dr. Mattias Desmet of the University of
Ghent. He says that the answer is not merely to go back to the previous
normal we used to enjoy. It was that old normal that set the stage for
the upheaval. We cannot go back because then we risk repeating what we
just lived through.
Instead, he says, the entire culture
and all countries need to discover a new way of living and thinking, a
new relationship with our civic leaders and a new relationship with each
other. He declines to say precisely what that looks like.
I will say it, however.
Freedom Is the Answer
It
must be rooted in the traditions of freedom. We need to learn to find
happiness in human choice, tolerance and peace with our neighbors. We
need to again find joy in work and fulfillment in prosperity and health.
That is a rebuilding exercise that will consume the dominant part of the rest of our lives.
It
will likely have to take place in the midst of a growing economic
crisis. Inflation might calm down a bit in the first quarter, but the
money sloshing around the country and the world has to end up somewhere.
It
will eventually convert to a much different price level that we have
right now. All our savings are at risk. All the things we took for
granted in the past could come into question as people look desperately
for a way out.
What Can We Trust?
People
masked up. They distanced. They curbed their social activities. They
complied with the shots, one, then two, then the booster. They did
everything right. And they got the virus anyway.
It is
impossible to underestimate the implications of this for millions of
people. They trusted the experts. The experts were wrong. Now people
have to ask themselves what is next.
Above all else, this
is going to be about regaining health. Eat right. Exercise. Get sun.
Stop the junk food. Focus on fundamentals. Eat fresh things. Stay as
stress-free as possible. Stop playing games with substances that are
unhealthy. If we really do all intend to live past the age of 80, we are
going to have to rethink many aspects of our lives.
In addition,
some of the most astute cultural observers out there are predicting a
widespread return to religious faith. Sadly, many of the religious
institutions of our past acquiesced to the tyranny. They did not resist.
They even preached compliance with practices pushed by Fauci and
others, surrendering their leadership in the spiritual realm.
The
ones that did not were the oddballs out there, the Amish, the Orthodox
Jews and the independent evangelicals. They kept their integrity. They
are likely to thrive in the future.
The Crypto Moment
Other
institutions that sailed through this crisis will thrive as well. It is
impossible not to notice that Bitcoin and associated cryptos paid
almost no attention at all to the pandemic, to the shutdowns, to the
crackdowns and controls. Blockchain applications continued to function
beautifully, without a hitch.
Friends of mine are careful these
days to put away as much as 20% of their paycheck into Bitcoin and other
cryptos. They leave them there, not spending them unless absolutely
necessary. They keep them in cold wallets, holding them and guarding
them for the days ahead. This makes sense.
We once
imagined that cryptocurrency would become the hand-to-hand currency that
would replace fiat money. That day may be coming, but it is a very long
way off.
The economic function of crypto has been in
fact to serve as the safe haven in a world gone mad, an uncorrupted and
incorruptible source of value that ignores the nation-state and the
madness of political culture.
I never wanted to live in a world
with mass loss of trust in everything that so many generations worked so
hard for so long to build. But that is where we are. Now is the time
for resilience and fortitude, and all the other virtues taught to us by
the ancients.
Despite all our modern technologies and conveniences, in the end what will save us are not our gadgets, but our values.
Picture: The Independent
