{"id":5453,"date":"2020-05-17T16:53:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-17T22:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/?p=5453"},"modified":"2020-05-18T22:53:07","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T04:53:07","slug":"a-morality-tale-of-two-playgrounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2020\/05\/a-morality-tale-of-two-playgrounds\/","title":{"rendered":"A Morality Tale of Two Playgrounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These are both recent photos &#8212; and they pretty well encapsulate everything significant about the Covid-19 disparities and vicissitudes and inanities:<\/p>\n<p>This first one is Malmo, Sweden &#8212; one of the few countries which, as you know, did not succumb to mass hysteria, nor conform nor cave to the intense consensus pressure which is still being applied.<\/p>\n<p>These Swedish children are children allowed to be children, even in the face of worldwide insanity:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.14.49-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19737\" src=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.14.49-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"590\" height=\"744\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This, upon the other hand, is panic-driven, postmodernistic, progressive absurdity:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-14-at-11.40.46-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-19666\" src=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-14-at-11.40.46-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"627\" height=\"468\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The children playing together in Sweden have <em>not<\/em> been put at abnormal risk, nor are their parents acting irresponsibly, nor are the children in any sort of danger &#8212; and, in fact, the seasonal flu, about which no one is talking or even thinking (though it&#8217;s still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/flu\/weekly\/index.htm\">out there<\/a>), is <a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/2020\/05\/17\/this-virus-doesnt-change-who-your-friends-are-it-reveals-who-your-friends-are-covid-19-is-not-like-the-flu-in-these-two-important-ways-and-we-should-all-be-grateful\/\">far riskier to children<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>How people react to those two photos tells you in an instant a great deal about the person&#8217;s entire philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of consensus &#8212; specifically the stupidity of making consensus your epistemic standard:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.12.43-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-19738\" src=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.12.43-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"623\" height=\"712\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.13.32-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-19739\" src=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.13.32-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"591\" height=\"91\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.13.21-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-19740\" src=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screen-Shot-2020-05-17-at-4.13.21-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"746\" height=\"753\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever wondered how something like NAZI Germany could have happened &#8212; when after the Reichstag fire, an executive order was decreed into law (the fire, incidentally, almost certainly started by Herman Goering and his men, because &#8220;emergencies,\u201d as Frederich Hayek so well noted, even fabricated emergencies, &#8220;have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty [may be] eroded&#8221;), President&nbsp;Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolph Hitler declared a temporary state of emergency amid the societal panic created by the fire, suspending civil liberties thereby, and doing so rapidly and on a shocking and widespread scale, and this, in turn, gave rise to President Hindenburg signing, in March of 1933, the&nbsp;Enabling Act, which <em>legally<\/em> granted arbitrary powers to the state, Chancellor Hitler then, one year later, right after President Hindenburg died, declaring himself <i>F\u00fchrer und Reichskanzler<\/i>, or Supreme Leader and Chancellor, which superseded both the Presidency and Chancellorship &#8212; this that you and I are witnessing right now across the entire USA and much of the world is precisely how such things like NAZI Germany happen. And please don&#8217;t be duped, no matter what you think of these particular lockdown measures today, don&#8217;t be duped into thinking that people today and societies today are too enlightened, having learned from the past, or too sophisticated or too hip, too politically correct or savvy:<\/p>\n<p>It can happen again.<\/p>\n<p>I promise you it can.<\/p>\n<p>People are as susceptible now &#8212; and almost certainly more so because of social media and the groupthink it fosters &#8212; to the cultic and conformist mentality as ever before. And the cost of conformity is colossal.<\/p>\n<p>This is why if you have even a vestige of the independent-thinker within you, you <em>must<\/em> stand up against this unprecedented power-grab, and <a href=\"http:\/\/journalpulp.com\/2020\/04\/25\/the-deadliest-virus-in-all-of-human-history-by-far\/\">the propaganda campaign that largely fueled it<\/a>. Even if you\u2019re perfectly okay with the state <em>now&nbsp;<\/em>having this kind of power over this particular thing, I beg you to&nbsp;<strong>realize there is no longer any check on it:<\/strong> it was decreed by executive order, and that power is automatically unchecked, and horribly dangerous, therefore.<\/p>\n<p>Do not worship at the shine of governmental power. Do not. Government is force. It is nothing more and it is nothing less.<\/p>\n<p>No matter what your political leanings, I beseech you to recognize the inherent danger of unchecked power &#8212; any and all unchecked power.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a partisan issue, at root.<\/p>\n<p>Think of that unchecked power turning, for no reason or just cause, against something (or someone) you hold dear \u2014 because I promise you that it is only a matter of time before this unleashed power-source spreads into other areas.<\/p>\n<p>Power and bureaucracy once established are impossible to retrogress away from.<\/p>\n<p>Freedom once gone is gone forever.<\/p>\n<p>Freedom is a birthright: it is <em>not<\/em> a permission.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>This pandemic does not in any way warrant the abrogation of individual rights.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s been done is a&nbsp;wild and arrantly unjust seizure of power. It is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to which, it is totally unnecessary. It has not helped the pandemic but hurt &#8212; and in the process it&#8217;s also completely exposed, in as stark a terms as you could ever conceive, the bumbling ineptitude inherent in government and its bureaus. Have you noticed how we stopped hearing about ventilators? Do you know why? (There is a very specific reason.) One day they were the panacea, the next day they were completely out of the discussion. The \u201cexperts\u201d and their &#8220;consensus,&#8221; despite their lack of knowledge and the epistemic crisis (which crisis and which lack of knowledge will never stop the &#8220;experts&#8221; nor their bureaus), put 36 million Americans out of work in a ponderous act of bumbling. Ask yourself: how did this temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into three months (and counting) of near-universal house arrest?&nbsp;How did it end up causing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/finance\/49-hospitals-furloughing-workers-in-response-to-covid-19.html\">furloughs at 256 hospitals<\/a>, a near total cessation of international travel, 40 percent job loss among people earning less than $40 thousand per year and staggering every economic sector &#8212; &nbsp;to say nothing of the mass confiscation of private property with the state-mandated closures of millions of businesses, all enacted overnight on the basis of incomplete knowledge?<\/p>\n<p>How?<\/p>\n<p>Think for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>I implore you: <em>think for yourself.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are both recent photos &#8212; and they pretty well encapsulate everything significant about the Covid-19 disparities and vicissitudes and inanities: This first one is Malmo, Sweden &#8212; one of the few countries which, as you know, did not succumb to mass hysteria, nor conform nor cave to the intense consensus pressure which is still &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2020\/05\/a-morality-tale-of-two-playgrounds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Morality Tale of Two Playgrounds&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2963],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5453"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5453"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5494,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5453\/revisions\/5494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}