Robbo,

The fate of the free world quite literally rests on the outcome of Novembers election months in America!

File under the "things that make you go hmmmmmmm"

https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=409681

Are the bats about to come home to roost? Probably not but there is nothing wrong in hoping they do!

tomo,
The popular mix these days is roughly equal parts of bureaucratic lassitude and vested interests. Looks like the Hawaiians mixed in a hefty dose of evil.

Some other depressing listening in the latest John Anderson interview with Victor Davis Hanson. The underlying theme was the prospects for the next US presidential election. You get a sense of how he feels about it from the fact his latest book is on how empires fall (he quoted Hemmingway's line on bankruptcy — gradually, and then suddenly). Some good kicks administered to the Ivy League universities, and to the US military going woke at the worst possible time. I thought he was about right on why Trump stands alone as the Republican candidate: that he is seen as the true outsider who's not going to pull his punches; and punches *are* needed. We'll see how it works out.

The sound quality on that video seems so-so, but a whole lot better than the mp3 audio I listened to (way too much gain on Hanson's mic. I'd say). Funny to end up with woeful audio at the end of all that fancy digital equpment.

tomo,
Yes, the working class seems to be copping it both ways. Supplanted politically by the new victim class, and economically by the new slave class. The latter is largely in China, but the UK and Australia seem to be adopting some of the US's long standing model of a local slave class made up of "irregular" immigrants. It's a bad thing, and the road ahead looks bumpy.

Some at Jo Nova's blame all the doctors who acquiesced in the COVID folly. I think that's unfair. Plenty of sceptical ordinary people (e.g. me) just kept their heads down. I plead clemency for GPs, etc., but blame does belong with the public health specialists who went along with lockdown and vaccination nonsense. And those TV doctors (with or without public health qualifications) deserve a lot of that blame.

It's a problem with our centralised systems that we see time and again. Each time the weakness comes down to a representative who stands in for a much larger whole; a few trinkets can win billions. When pharma buys people at FDA, TGA, MHRA, ... it's regulatory capture. I don't think there's a name for it when they buy "influencers" like TV doctors. And, at a political level, spy agencies have often enjoyed "owning" politicians, one way or another.

I doubt there's any blanket solution. I would lean towards a legal "entrapment". E.g. that a condition of employment in the TGA would be that, sometimes, you may be offered inducements, apparently from pharma, but really from us, and you face time in prison if you accept. That could work with the politician too (odds of them voting for it ~ 0). The TV doctor might also be a tough one to crack (cult of personality — think how many disgraced tele-evangelists continue to have a following).

Robert

I went down a few rabbit holes about pharma payments to TV doctors. At the very least they should wear logo'd-up baseball caps and T-shirts. The information seems scattered and sporadic, it being abundantly clear (to what's left of my mind) that the topic is a v.sensitive one :-(

A crashing silence out there....

https://twitter.com/libbyemmons/status/1790016630329598316

tomo,
Puts the "heroes of the NHS" into a fair perspective, doesn't it.

Listened to Brendan O'Neill interviewing Batya Ungar-Sargon whose stance is the (hardly new) idea that the woke people are trying to elbow out working class people as the new sufferers of great injustice. It was ok, but nothing too special. One part I did like was:

The manufacturing jobs: they *didn't* go the way of the horse and buggy; they went to China. Cars are still being made! It's just so wrong to think that our economy has somehow moved on from service industry jobs or manufacturing. All of that labour is still being done, it's just being done for pennies.

Thinking back to the Cold War days, the decadent West was something the Soviets liked to talk about. I thought they were wrong, but turns out they were just a bit premature.