In the coronavirus crisis, this much should be clear: our rulers don’t know what they are doing. And that being true, they will fight to the death to avoid being accountable for it. Because the pandemic and the madcap government response — a societal lockdown here, a few trillion dollars there — isn’t about a virus. It’s about protecting the institutions involved.
They blew it. All of them. Governments, global bodies, the “experts.” Glaring incompetence always undermines authority. As it should. But no one in authority — especially the incompetent — wants to give up the power that comes with it. Almost by instinct, institutions double down and try to make themselves even more indispensible to your life.
So by government order, we have to stay inside and thus weaken our immune systems. We have to close the economy and await starvation and eviction. We have to judge the actions of our fellow citizens by our own beliefs in what is good health, which — terrifyingly — is driven by political feeling. Trump bad, I wear a mask. Trump good, I don’t wash my hands.
But we cannot see that very little of this concerns what is good for ordinary people, even what is good for public health. Because we are bombarded constantly with information in order to compensate for the fact that the institutions have lost authority. We know it in our gut, but if we do not practice discretion of information, we get overwhelemed. We began to react and then the institutions have us where we want.
There are a lot of theories out there about collusion and coordination between governments, global institutions, philanthropists, and the like in this crisis. Many claim that this is a plot to rule the world. Some theories have a long track record, others are quite new. I don’t know what goes on in high circles and how much of it is a wink and a nod and how much of it is intentional. But I do know this: whatever it is they are intending, whether it’s conspiracy or they are simply trying to save their own skin by ruining our lives, they are going to blow it.
Again, institutions are incompetent. This happens to all successful institutions because the longer the institution exists, the more its purpose becomes continuing to exist. In order to survive their loss of authority, institutions have to resort to a constant churn of lies to overcome what is to us reasonable but to them intolerable. The problem — for them, not for us — is that it's not the Big Lie, the one Hitler said was the most powerful kind. No, one can engage in a Big Lie only if one has a singular objective, one to which even the institutions themselves are subject. Remember, even Hitler purged his pet Sturmabteilung because he doubted their loyalty.
In contrast, the institutions at work in this pandemic engage in an interwoven tissue of small lies, deceptions, omissions, and shame. They have worked in this manner for years. It has become second nature to institutions to survive and maintain their power in this way, because this tissue of lies and deceptions is effective at diverting attention and allowing the institution to persist by sheer inertia.
The problem is that if these institutions are angling to survive or even profit from this pandemic, their very nature precludes it. If they really do have a conspiratorial goal, it will work only up to the point that it compromises the survival of one of the actors. Then that actor will began to triangulate and issue their own lies and deceptions that will continue to deceive the public but also put the conspiratorial goal at risk.
I saw this happen when I lived in South Korea, during the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. The scandal that brought President Park down started as a small thing. Choi Soon-sil and a media outlet — the former a participant in the scandal and the latter privy to certain knowledge — had some sort of falling out over a minor matter unrelated to the eventual scandal. The media outlet decided to screw over Choi and released compromising information on her. But then it was like a loose thread on a sweater. Netizens began to investigate and soon the scandal completely unraveled the careful omission of the truth. Eventually it was so big that the news agencies who were tacitly on Park’s side could not suppress the information any longer. They had to turn on Park or be eaten alive by public opinion.
Extrapolate that now to a global scale. While the institutions now are working together as best they can to grab power and retain credibility, at some point choices will have to be made. People may not take their vaccine. With the projected death toll having fallen very short, their constantly fearmongering may sound like Chicken Little. Or maybe upcoming elections will have some politicians sweating bullets and thinking about breaking ranks. At some point, something will give. And those who get out while gettin’s good will have an easier time of it. No one wants to left holding the bill and blame for coronavirus when everyone else has dined and dashed. They have betrayed us now, but the time is coming when they will betray each other. Until then, we must simply survive and make up our own minds. It isn’t pretty, but it’s the natural order of things, across the ages.
So that is my word of wisdom for now. It isn’t much; it won’t heal anyone, it won’t give you your job back. But it will help you understand the fear that has been put in you by someone else. Because it is their fear, transferred. The institutions are protecting themselves, not you. Even if millions do not die, many millions more will be ruined for years if not for life because of their decisions. They have to run from that fact, run from the accountability such failed responsibility demands. That’s scary. The institutions should be. Reality is coming for them.