Thank you for another wonderful article. I think the problem with this country (and perhaps all of them) is that we never understand that the people in charge are just like the people around us. Yeah, there are some great and altruistic ones that you could hand a million dollars to, ask them to watch it, come back a week later, and it would still be sitting there. Some people are self-aware and understand that they are not helping, for example, the homeless by giving them tents, even if their jobs depend on it. They have conviction and purpose and would rather find real solutions, no matter whom they have to involve to do it and what they have to give up. And then there's the other 75%. (I made that number up. I have no idea. Sometimes it feels like closer to 99%.)
I know acknowledgment of a problem is the first step to fixing it, but we've dug ourselves a deep, deep hole here, and I'd love to read an article about solutions. For example, I have noticed a problem with "scale": Scale of the federal government, scale of our corporations, scale of our non-profits, scale of our media, scale of our parties. We have a serious crisis of scale. That might be a place to start. We stand no chance until we cut organizations, entities, and institutions down to size.
This was my FB post on August 19, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan:
"The departure from Afghanistan provides a good opportunity to reflect and learn from what went wrong in the “war on terror.”
Remember all the moralizing, shaming, and stifling of debate (“support our troops!,” “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.")? The heavy-handed overreaction without properly considering capabilities and negative consequences (nation building, drone program, “you go to war with the army you have”)? The hubris and arrogance (nation building, “Mission Accomplished!,” "They'll greet us as liberators!")? The hysteria and fearmongering totally disproportionate to the actual level of risk (dirty nukes, the smoking gun turning into a mushroom cloud, rainbow terror “threat levels”)? The bizarre superstitions to “keep safe” that remain with us (taking shoes off and dumping out liquids at the airport)? The constantly shifting justifications and objectives (capturing terrorists, WMD, democracy!, women’s rights)? The curtailment of civil liberties that we will never undo (the “PATRIOT ACT,” mass surveillance, Guantanamo)? The permanent bureaucratic expansion (Homeland Security)? The profiteering by opportunistic corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel)? The media’s unquestioning acceptance of official narratives until it was too late (WMD, greeted as liberators)?
That all sucked, didn’t it? Let’s not do that again. Boy, would we feel sheepish if we did that again."
Yeah, we totally did it again. Oops! And much worse than before. That the wheels had come fully off the wagon and that this all had everything to do with power and control and virtually nothing to do with public health became crystal clear by no later than July 2021, when Israel had a wave of cases after its mass vaccination campaign and all the authorities were still pretending like the vaccines significantly reduced transmission. By the time Biden gave his Orwellian "pandemic of the unvaccinated" speech, the establishment had finalized its divorce from reality. And, although some rollbacks are taking place, insanity still prevails, even though it is pretty clear now that Omicron is a f&*king cold! If there were any doubt as to that last point, this UC Berkley and Kaiser Permanente study removes it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1
And yet... we still have nonsense like colleges requiring students to have proof of boosters, Austria is pushing forward with mandatory vaccines for all, all sorts of poking, prodding, and paperwork is required for travel, mask mania persists in much of the world, etc. Even if the Covid-specific policies get fully rolled back, we now have a global turnkey totalitarian system in place, ready to leap into action for any threat, real or make believe. Unless there is a real reckoning, and real accountability, over the shameful, ineffective, incompetent, deceitful, and deeply harmful totalitarian response to Sars-Cov-2, the systems and a$$holes who run them will remain unperturbed and ready to f*&k up our lives over and over again, with increasing severity upon each iteration.
Anyway, that's my rant. Thank you, Leighton, for expressing the corruption surrounding us with such clarity and with a degree of dispassion I am unable to muster at this point.
On the flip-side you can see the same dynamics on the 'right'. Fundamentalist/evangelical ministries become corrupted and entrenched with power, money and political clout. Abortion, once considered just a Catholic issue and supported by the likes of Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan became the bludgeon issue to divide, separate, enrage....and make money and seize political office...with all the perks and privileges such entails.
It would be more helpful and accurate if Leighton Woodhouse pointed out that both 'left' and 'right' have become subsumed in this type of self-interest power seeking and corruption that is destroying any understanding, comity among diverse interests and adherence to the common good.
Thanks for this excellent work. Lots to think about. Quick question: You say Katie Herzog "has pointed to a much different example of how organizations seeking to sustain themselves can manufacture the existence of social problems rather than the other way around. There’s a reason, she argues..." Where can I find this?
Leighton, do you think the current state of public health strategy is due more to “outside” forces leveraging scientific-expertise to gain political legitimacy, or a creeping institutional capture of the sciences itself? I was in biochem in the mid 2000’s (I left academia when a health-scare made me re-evaluate my priorities), and it’s as if we memory-holed tbe decades of established-scholarship on public-health outreach:
The vaccine-issue alone (as an example).:
- While theory of “psychological reactance” predicted that mandates would be most counterproductive for the (mostly conservative) unvaccinated, even the “outreach” was idiotic. Studies have shown that appeals to community were more persuasive in this group than “education” (and using the unpopular public-health group from the “science says protest!”? I can’t think of anyone worse to use to argue the case!!). By unnecessarily confining the scope of discourse to “peer-reviewed study” it maximized conditions for misinformation: it’s very easy to manipulate/edit a paper but much harder to twist a philosophical appeal. (An example in “liberals” the swapping of “ethyl” and “methyl” mercury during canned-tuna toxicity scare; so it’s not a feature seen in one political party).
I’ve noticed that suddenly the old-literature that argues that vaccine mandates are often counterproductive (the dominant view even during the Obama years!) is suddenly showing up on Google (there was a slew of “published only this year” research that argued that vaccine mandates now suddenly work; now being de-ranked which lets you know a large part of it was just manufacturing consent and political saving of face, effectiveness versus damned!
Thank you for another wonderful article. I think the problem with this country (and perhaps all of them) is that we never understand that the people in charge are just like the people around us. Yeah, there are some great and altruistic ones that you could hand a million dollars to, ask them to watch it, come back a week later, and it would still be sitting there. Some people are self-aware and understand that they are not helping, for example, the homeless by giving them tents, even if their jobs depend on it. They have conviction and purpose and would rather find real solutions, no matter whom they have to involve to do it and what they have to give up. And then there's the other 75%. (I made that number up. I have no idea. Sometimes it feels like closer to 99%.)
I know acknowledgment of a problem is the first step to fixing it, but we've dug ourselves a deep, deep hole here, and I'd love to read an article about solutions. For example, I have noticed a problem with "scale": Scale of the federal government, scale of our corporations, scale of our non-profits, scale of our media, scale of our parties. We have a serious crisis of scale. That might be a place to start. We stand no chance until we cut organizations, entities, and institutions down to size.
Really nice synthesis; thank you.
Excellent article!
This was my FB post on August 19, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan:
"The departure from Afghanistan provides a good opportunity to reflect and learn from what went wrong in the “war on terror.”
Remember all the moralizing, shaming, and stifling of debate (“support our troops!,” “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.")? The heavy-handed overreaction without properly considering capabilities and negative consequences (nation building, drone program, “you go to war with the army you have”)? The hubris and arrogance (nation building, “Mission Accomplished!,” "They'll greet us as liberators!")? The hysteria and fearmongering totally disproportionate to the actual level of risk (dirty nukes, the smoking gun turning into a mushroom cloud, rainbow terror “threat levels”)? The bizarre superstitions to “keep safe” that remain with us (taking shoes off and dumping out liquids at the airport)? The constantly shifting justifications and objectives (capturing terrorists, WMD, democracy!, women’s rights)? The curtailment of civil liberties that we will never undo (the “PATRIOT ACT,” mass surveillance, Guantanamo)? The permanent bureaucratic expansion (Homeland Security)? The profiteering by opportunistic corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel)? The media’s unquestioning acceptance of official narratives until it was too late (WMD, greeted as liberators)?
That all sucked, didn’t it? Let’s not do that again. Boy, would we feel sheepish if we did that again."
Yeah, we totally did it again. Oops! And much worse than before. That the wheels had come fully off the wagon and that this all had everything to do with power and control and virtually nothing to do with public health became crystal clear by no later than July 2021, when Israel had a wave of cases after its mass vaccination campaign and all the authorities were still pretending like the vaccines significantly reduced transmission. By the time Biden gave his Orwellian "pandemic of the unvaccinated" speech, the establishment had finalized its divorce from reality. And, although some rollbacks are taking place, insanity still prevails, even though it is pretty clear now that Omicron is a f&*king cold! If there were any doubt as to that last point, this UC Berkley and Kaiser Permanente study removes it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1
And yet... we still have nonsense like colleges requiring students to have proof of boosters, Austria is pushing forward with mandatory vaccines for all, all sorts of poking, prodding, and paperwork is required for travel, mask mania persists in much of the world, etc. Even if the Covid-specific policies get fully rolled back, we now have a global turnkey totalitarian system in place, ready to leap into action for any threat, real or make believe. Unless there is a real reckoning, and real accountability, over the shameful, ineffective, incompetent, deceitful, and deeply harmful totalitarian response to Sars-Cov-2, the systems and a$$holes who run them will remain unperturbed and ready to f*&k up our lives over and over again, with increasing severity upon each iteration.
Anyway, that's my rant. Thank you, Leighton, for expressing the corruption surrounding us with such clarity and with a degree of dispassion I am unable to muster at this point.
Brilliant
This has been going on for a lot longer than the past couple of years.
On the flip-side you can see the same dynamics on the 'right'. Fundamentalist/evangelical ministries become corrupted and entrenched with power, money and political clout. Abortion, once considered just a Catholic issue and supported by the likes of Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan became the bludgeon issue to divide, separate, enrage....and make money and seize political office...with all the perks and privileges such entails.
It would be more helpful and accurate if Leighton Woodhouse pointed out that both 'left' and 'right' have become subsumed in this type of self-interest power seeking and corruption that is destroying any understanding, comity among diverse interests and adherence to the common good.
Thanks for this excellent work. Lots to think about. Quick question: You say Katie Herzog "has pointed to a much different example of how organizations seeking to sustain themselves can manufacture the existence of social problems rather than the other way around. There’s a reason, she argues..." Where can I find this?
Leighton, do you think the current state of public health strategy is due more to “outside” forces leveraging scientific-expertise to gain political legitimacy, or a creeping institutional capture of the sciences itself? I was in biochem in the mid 2000’s (I left academia when a health-scare made me re-evaluate my priorities), and it’s as if we memory-holed tbe decades of established-scholarship on public-health outreach:
The vaccine-issue alone (as an example).:
- While theory of “psychological reactance” predicted that mandates would be most counterproductive for the (mostly conservative) unvaccinated, even the “outreach” was idiotic. Studies have shown that appeals to community were more persuasive in this group than “education” (and using the unpopular public-health group from the “science says protest!”? I can’t think of anyone worse to use to argue the case!!). By unnecessarily confining the scope of discourse to “peer-reviewed study” it maximized conditions for misinformation: it’s very easy to manipulate/edit a paper but much harder to twist a philosophical appeal. (An example in “liberals” the swapping of “ethyl” and “methyl” mercury during canned-tuna toxicity scare; so it’s not a feature seen in one political party).
I’ve noticed that suddenly the old-literature that argues that vaccine mandates are often counterproductive (the dominant view even during the Obama years!) is suddenly showing up on Google (there was a slew of “published only this year” research that argued that vaccine mandates now suddenly work; now being de-ranked which lets you know a large part of it was just manufacturing consent and political saving of face, effectiveness versus damned!