Douglas Murray-The 2020s will be boring, not roaring
Much has already been said about how underwhelming ‘freedom day’ was, not least because our twice-jabbed Prime Minister gave his great national address from self-isolation. Adding to the feeling of merriment, he then warned that from September anyone over the age of 18 hoping to go into a nightclub or other venue ‘where large crowds gather’ will have to show papers demonstrating they are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile the NHS ‘ping’ app has already closed musicals and other live performances that were finally about to return. The future rolling out before us is one not of greater freedom but of endless pings, masks, boosters and variants.
And yet it is the response of wider society, and not just officialdom, which suggests a problem. Small yet suggestive case studies have hinted that we are keener to put the dampeners on than we are to take them off.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
The ease with which the enlightened rationalize the application of Stalinism on their fellow citizens to mitigate miniscule risks to the very people targeted is abhorrent. We seem to be awash in citizenry who, as long as they are not personally inconvenienced in the near term, many of whom are not required to be exposed to the masses and can easily self isolate, are oblivious to urging all kinds of unnecessary control over others not so lucky. Public health and communism seam to have become one.
That should be a “seem”, not a “seam”. Biden moment!
Libertarians and conservatives keep talking about the government but the problem is the broader public. It’s not that the public is letting this all happen, a plurality (or even majority) of the public is demanding it!
One thing that was confirmed to me during this episode is that if the government told my neighbors to kill each other in the name of safety, many of them would not only do it but do it with glee.
The books Ordinary Men and the Gulag Archipelago should both be required reading in order to graduate from high school.