I’ve been thinking a lot about how the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and vaccination drama has played out in the U.S., and why that might be.
It’s pretty clear by now that the coronavirus with cutting edge gain of function capabilities was made in a lab in Wuhan, China and that this particular project was a collaboration between that country’s government and my own. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of our federal government’s response to the pandemic, was deeply involved.
Whether or not the virus leaked accidentally or was deliberately released will probably remain as murky as the truth about the unfortunate events of 9/11.
No real inquiry will ever be conducted, and the misinformation swirling in “news” outlets, blogs, and social media platforms will continue to muddy the waters.
Certain bioweapons experts like Dr. Francis Boyle maintain that the accidental leak theory is likely. His reasoning: all bioweapons he’s studied have accidentally leaked, including Lyme Disease and West Nile virus.
But the history of U.S. development and deployment of bioweapons since the nation’s founding is both sordid and largely undisputed. So, there’s precedent for an intentional introduction of the virus. Also for the assertion that the vaccines themselves could be bioweapons.
I used to sort through 9/11 theories with an eye to the uses that were made of that event: perpetual occupation and theft of resources in the Middle East; severe restrictions on civil liberties formerly guaranteed by the Constitution; the creation of the odious Department of Homeland Security and its evil subsidiary ICE. So quickly were these changes instituted that it is barely plausible that the events of 9/11 were unexpected.
Now I’m sorting through COVID theories with a similar lens. Aside from the death of 4 million, accelerated wealth inequality, and the privatization of profits from vaccines developed largely at the public’s expense, what has been the most noticeable effect of the pandemic to date?
The division of formerly coherent communities, groups, coworkers, and families has been a very significant effect of COVID.
This would put the virus in a category with plenty of other features of 21st century life:
- robust, well-funded disinformation campaigns disseminated widely and constantly
- promotion of the belief in false dichotomies (e.g. Democratic Party vs. Republican Party)
- deliberate fueling of conflicts between generations, genders, sexual orientations, education levels, and geographical groups.
To what purpose?
A recent observation by Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone caught my eye.
As people lose faith in electoral politics to change anything, so the corporate media gin up the show of differences between the two flavors of oligarchy. But young people aren’t buying it. Most of them are too damn poor to believe that it makes a significant difference in their circumstances which color is sitting in the White House or Congress. The American Dream for these generations is to be able to move to a country with universal health care. On this basis, they envy Russia and China rather than fearing them.
Keen interest in socialism, communism, Marxist-Leninist theory, radical socialist feminism, and non-hiearchical cooperatives is evident from Gen Z through millenials. Capitalism is a dirty word. This undoubtedly worries those “winning” at capitalism (though how profits generated by destroying the planet as a viable biome for human beings can be seen as a “win” defies logic).
Some of the formerly coherent groups I’m aware of that are rendered asunder by the COVID vaccination controversy: nuclear families, extended families, organizations working for social change, dance troupes, schools and universities. Cousins gathered this summer based on who had, and had not, gotten the shot, and teens whose parents would not consent to their vaccination were excluded. Mask wearers inside stores were jeered at and hassled by mask refusers. Hospital workers went back to wearing N95 masks and goggles all day every day, seething with resentment at people who won’t pitch in for public health after an exhausting 16 months of pandemic life.
It’s almost like the virus was designed to feed into the individualism on steroids that characterizes U.S. culture.
And was deployed only after the immense disinformation mechanisms of mass media and social media were in place to cast serious doubt on the veracity of any and every fact.
Divided, we are most vulnerable to the depradations of our corporate overlords.
EDITED July 29, 2021
A few things I wish I’d seen — or remembered — before writing about this yesterday. I’m likely to write about this topic again but I don’t have time right now, so I’ll include these as a postscrip here.
