The Great Fear Machine of 2020, by Paul Rosenberg

Never have so many feared so little for so long. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

The events of 2020 were unique in human history, and so I think it’s important to give them some perspective. What we experienced was the first televised plague. What it spawned was a unique fear machine.

Fear delivery systems go back to the first tyrants, of course, but this one featured a scale and an intimacy that went beyond all others, even those of the vile USSR.

The plague itself, COVID-19, was minor as such things go. The flu of 1919 was far worse, not to mention historical plagues that made this one look like a case of the sniffles. Nonetheless, it was enough to spawn something unique. So, briefly, let’s look at the pieces that came together:

• • TV news: Television news was dying; their ratings had cratered and there was no real hope to be seen. Politicians and the elderly still took TV news seriously; the informed and the young did not. To these companies, COVID was salvation. It locked people in their houses for months at a time, with nothing to do but watch.

• • Politicians: Nothing in our time empowered middling political officials like COVID-19. Governors and regional officials became gods. They shut down whole states and provinces in a stroke and sent their armed enforcers to make it so, while television cameras hung on their every word. People get into politics for the rush of power, and 2020 gave it to them in spades. The new potentates decided what could or could not be sold, forbade relgious ceremonies, and so on.

• • Social media: Facebook, Google (YouTube), Twitter and the rest have become the core of soft power (aka, mass manipulation). As with television, COVID forced people into their arms, and they were pleased to addict them. More than that, the operators of these systems stepped from the land of geeks to the halls of power, where they drank the evil brew and liked it.

To this we could add maniacal health officials and others. It was an orgy for power addicts. And again we saw that fear makes humans manipulable. 

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