Making sense of the world through data
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If it wasn't clear yet a year ago when the whole Covid charade started, it should be by now: Covid is a nasty virus but what is going on around the world is less and less related to the medical emergency and more and more to the need of a financial reset. A German doctor arrested on-line in his home by a SWAT team, interdiction to take pictures of the police in France, extreme lock-down measures in Australia for "one" sick person...
But what all these countries share beyond a virus killing a few more people than usual is an unmanageable debt which will require extreme and undemocratic measures sooner than later. The first crack in the system came in 2008. It was followed a few years later by the Euro crisis and finally by the US Repo market crisis in October 2019.
However you look at it, it is now obvious that 2021 will be a turning point. It is likely to be for the worse but you never know. Just as the fog of war often makes the outcome of a battle unpredictable, our society is a complex system and understanding the outcome of a crisis is still far beyond our abilities.
The article below is nevertheless a good starting point to make sense of the complexity...
In The Dystopic Great Reset and the Fight Back: Population Reduction and Hope for the Children of Men , our Part I, we developed on our previous essays on planned obsolescence and the problems of the old paradigm as we enter the 4th Industrial Revolution. We looked at how several science fiction works like ‘The Virus’ and ‘Children of Men’
in culture actually predicted and lent to us an understanding the new
reified nightmare being built around us. Finally, we looked at
Althusser’s ‘ISA’, Ideological State Apparatus and how this was
developed towards a politically correct elite culture which
opened the door to the so-called ‘new normal’, where slavery and
self-harm are virtue signals.
At the end of ‘The Dystopic Great Reset and the Fight Back […]’
we noted that it would be necessary to trace aspects of the history of
the social contract in order to lay the foundation of understanding
Because the vast majority of us today are born into civilization, we
don’t always think about its origins in terms of the agency of
individuals who joined or formed the first civilizations. We tend to be
taught through our institutions that it was something in between
voluntary and natural, and the great 19th century nationalist
romanticism promoted a view of self-determination of peoples, a view
that would later be taken up by nationalist and leftist movements around
the world in the 20th century – later enshrined in the UN.
But much of the story of the first state-building
civilizations, understanding that people are a resource when organized
and put to work, is that some balance between slavery and half-freedom
rests at its foundation.
The mass production of books and guns, which came about
within the same historical period, entirely upended the old foundation
of class society. The mass production of guns and books may
have, at a certain point, been seen as powerful reinforcements for the
status quo. Larger armies could be effectively armed at lower cost. The
Ideological State Apparatus, as we can infer from Althusser, could be
disseminated and internalized more effectively. But as with technology,
came its dual-use features. The very technologies developed with an eye
at perfecting the control mechanisms within the status quo of oligarchic
orders, in keeping up with the technologies that other competing power
networks (countries, kingdoms, nations, etc.), can be turned on its head
if these technologies were democratized and fell into the hands of the
broadest possible numbers of people. Such was the process both in the
American Revolution, and also for instance in the Vietnamese resistance
to Japanese, French, and American colonialism in the last century.
For the first time in many centuries, knowledge and brute
force were no longer an insurmountable near-monopoly held by the state
or those it could compromise. The gun – the great equalizer of men, and the book – the great liberator of minds.
Since that epoch of great emancipation and promise, technology has continued with this contradictory path of dual-use.
However, the balance of power and the natures of technologies hitherto
developed has shifted tremendously, favoring the status quo and
disempowering the broad masses. This lamentable condition, however, is
upended by the applied technologies which the real 4th Industrial
Revolution (not the World Economic Forum’s model) brings into being.
In the last epoch of the 20th century, we had begun a
dangerous trajectory to a blind-sighted overspecialization
(compartmentalization/fachidiotizmus) which are the hallmarks of technocracy, and away from the liberatory epoch of centuries past which gave rise to constitutional republics.
In the past, before the old liberatory epoch, just as a military
class was reliant on exclusive access to armaments, today is
characterized by a combination of pharmaceutical and social programming
through media which are powers out of the reach of the people. This rise
and perfection of what Heidegger would define and what Marcuse would
characterize as a permanently stable techno-industrial bureaucratic mode
of society, characterizes today’s world of social-media influencing,
anti-depressants, mass psychological operations such as virtual or
holographic pandemics (HIV, Covid-19, etc.), and the surveillance state.
This part is most important in establishing that for the
foreseeable future, escaping the 4th Industrial Revolution is an
impossibility. At the same time, the dual-use nature of the
technologies still hold some liberatory potential, but the past methods
of arriving at these has changed.
This means that the ideology of the ruling class is tremendously
important. Unlike revolutionary republican and bolshevist conceptions of
power and change which share an insurrectionist presumption premised in
the liberatory age of guns and books (which made the ‘political
soldier’ a possibility), we have increasingly entered a zenith point in
social-control technologies wherein the likelihood of a controlled group
winning a contest for power against the controlling group approaches
zero, if we imagine this as a contest between armed groups wherein the
military acts not in the interests of their extended families, but in
the interests of those writing the checks.
Such limitations were already understood by those influenced by
bolshevism, such as Antonio Gramsci in his discussion of hegemony in
his Quaderni del Carcere.
Cultural hegemony is a war of attrition over the entire ideological
terrain, a component of what today we might call full-spectrum
dominance. This parallels (and must have influenced) the later
Althusserian conception of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA).
The single-most revolutionary legal document to have arisen
in the course of the last three-hundred years in the western tradition
was the U.S. Constitution. At its foundation rests the
assumption that man is born free, and enters into a social contract
willingly, a view supported by a view of natural rights, natural law,
and an equality of the soul endowed by the creator.
It is a social contract that man enters into every-day, and can exit any-day.
To understand the liberatory potential of a 4th Industrial Revolution
is to understand the dual-use nature of technology in the history of
liberatory epochs.
Before the rise of computers and robots performing much of the labor
in society, societies grew in strength as they grew in people. With
automation and roboticization, human beings become a surplus cost of no
consequence to production provided that society itself is not
anthropocentric.
The new normal being proposed, is one with no freedom
of thought, let alone expression. It is one with social credit, tagging
people as if they were animals on a wildlife reserve, and the total
regimentation of every-day life. The contours of what techno-industrial
civilization can lead to, of what scientific tyranny looks like, is not
only visible to us now, but has been creeping into our lives for the
past century.
The response to this in the U.S. has been an increasing support for
Trump and the phenomenon that can really be described as ‘Trumpism’,
which despite the media hologram of a Biden victory will most probably
result in a second Trump administration. Trumpism has become synonymous
with Constitutionalism, despite the revenge-fantasy language
and tropes employed by a disconcerting segment of its base. In England,
we have seen a parallel movement of the post-left, and a rise in ‘common
law’ activism and an activist education campaign surrounding the
meaning of the Magna Carta. For these parallel reasons, we had also
previously characterized the Trump phenomenon as the child of a
frustrated Occupy Wall Street movement after its affair with the Tea
Party, but back in numbers and strength by a dispossessed working class
long ago betrayed by organized labor, the DNC, and imbalanced trade
deals with China.
But while these responses (with their defects and
limitations) are a healthy sign, they do not yet have the depth to
articulate a countering vision for society which also takes into account
the state of technology as it exists today. That is why we
have not seen a very thorough public discussion on the reality of
technology, and the state of matters which are real and present.
Instead, we see from the conservative reaction to the 4IR – a
reaction which raises all of the correct concerns and levies all of the
correct criticisms against the banker’s version of it. This historically parallels the Luddites,
who saw at the start of the 19th century that mass industry was
replacing the work of the skilled trades and craftsmen with machines.
Their solution, to destroy the machines, failed primarily because
machines produce more in volume than men. Even if they had won the
political battle, it would have only been a matter of time before a
competing society fully utilizing industry would over-take theirs. And
perhaps this here tells the entire story of the conquest over nomadic
and agriculturalist societies at the hands of the state-building,
techno-industrial societies even thousands of years ago.
And so we arrive at the stark truth – there is no running or hiding from the future.
It is the task of free citizens to take a hold of the emerging new
technologies into their own hands, for their own purposes: to live in
society that acts towards human freedom and dignity of the soul. A world
where our small children can grow up in a world without unnecessary
humility or fear. A world where there is promise and hope, a promise
truly justified by a real-existing society around them based upon what
is true, what is beautiful, and what is good.
In 2020, most countries in the world locked down their
societies with the goal of controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. There were
some outliers. Sweden, Belarus, Tanzania, and some US states deployed little in the way of “nonpharmaceutical interventions.”
Another fascinating outlier – often cited as a case in which a government handled the pandemic the correct way – was Taiwan. Indeed, Taiwan presents an anomaly in the mitigation and overall handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In terms of stringency, Taiwan ranks among the lowest in the world, with fewer controls than Sweden and far lower than the U.S.
The government did test at the border and introduce some minor controls but nowhere near that of most counties. In general, Taiwan rejected lockdown in favor of maintaining social and economic functioning.
Source: Oxford University (stringency index) and Lancet
How did Taiwan fare in terms of cases? Taiwan has seen 573 cases,
which is remarkably low for a country with a population of close to 24
million and a population density of 1,739 people per square mile.
Source: Worldometer
In terms of death, the numbers are even more striking. Throughout the
entire pandemic, Taiwan experienced only 7 deaths. Of the deaths, the
individuals were in their 40sto80s, the majority with preexisting health conditions.
Source: Worldometer
To put this in perspective, in a stringent terrority with similar demographics, LA County’s
population is 10 million and population density is 2,500 per square
mile – meaning slightly denser but less populated – but by contrast, it
has had 309,000 cases and 7,000 deaths.
How did Taiwan maintain such low numbers?
A paper from the Lancet aims
to answer this question by providing a few explanations. The authors’
main claim is that Taiwan’s rapid mobilization is ascribed to pre-Covid
medical institutions, which include the Taiwan CDC, established in 1990,
and the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). In addition, Taiwan’s
outbreak of SARS in 2003 allowed them to create plans for managing a
similar disease later on.
For example, a 2005 study of
SARS in Taiwan already discussed preparation measures in the case of a
new outbreak, explaining that focus must be directed towards the older
and immunocompromised populations and hospitals should be managed
vigilantly.
Drawing on previous experience, Taiwan created a culture in which
masks are worn widely and implemented advanced contact tracing
technologies and early screening of international travelers. However,
masks were not worn by all citizens and were rather valued for its
protection from air pollution. The Lancet authors attribute these strategies to Taiwan’s low cases and deaths.
But here is a puzzle. Usually when public health intellectuals speak
of a good handling of a pandemic, they express the need for widespread testing.
That is followed by an exhortation to track and isolate. Again, Taiwan
did some of this at the border. Taiwan did have a wide availability of
tests – unlike the US – and did have an open testing approach so that
anyone could get tested, symptomatic or not.
Even then, Taiwan had one of the lowest scores on tests per
thousand of any country in the world. Only one person in 100,000
undertook a Covid-19 test.
The government maintained open communication and transparency with its citizens. For example, the Taiwan CDC produced daily reports on the state of coronavirus in the country. Taiwan’s reports are not politicized attempts to generate hysteria (as in places like the US and other European countries), but are straightforward and concentrated on the actual numbers.
This same strategy was also at work in places that did not impose lockdowns, including South Dakota and Sweden. Although
one could argue that top-down approaches to information are flawed,
there is something to be said for a country that values transparency
because it allows for the public to have greater trust in the
information provided to them.
As former Taiwanese Vice President Chen has stated:
“I would like to point out a critical element of the Taiwan Model:
transparency. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the Taiwanese
government has spared no effort in ensuring that the general public has
open access to COVID-19 information.”
Another explanation for Taiwan’s proactive approach is that it
possesses first-hand information on coronavirus management from its
SARS-CoV-1 experience in 2003, which has informed its response and
mitigation plans. The fact that Taiwan has dealt with another
coronavirus outbreak previously has allowed it to alleviate devastating
effects in later years.
Taiwanese health authorities shared information with other countries.
Former VP Chen explained why this was crucial, given the Taiwanese SARS
experience in 2003:
“International cooperation is the only way to fight a global
outbreak….We are more than happy to share our knowledge, experience, and
expertise with the international community. Taiwan can help, and Taiwan
is helping.”
Nevertheless, other countries and NGOs fail to recognize Taiwan’s
unique knowledge and thus do not consider it in the competing market of
information that could ultimately inform policy decisions. Perhaps one
of the reasons for this issue is that the WHO refuses
to acknowledge Taiwan’s independence from China, thus excluding the
country from participating in discussions surrounding the pandemic. This
stubbornness prevents the dissemination of useful information that
could protect people from illness and economic affliction, thus only
serving to create harm.
We are still left with a mystery. Taiwan did not lock down.
It did not widely test. And yet it had the lowest death rate per million
of any populous country in the world. It experienced 0.3 deaths per
million and ranks 189th in the world.
What, then, is the explanation? As much as public health authorities
in the West want to consider policy as a decisive factor in the success
or failure of pandemic response, the Taiwanese case might have nothing
at all to do with the public policy response.
The real explanation deals with innate immunities from other vaccines or virus exposures. For example, a study found SARS-CoV-1 reactive T cells in patients who were infected with SARS 17 years ago. Even though about 680 people
in Taiwan were infected with SARS in 2003, the study shows a
possibility that enduring T cells could influence the effect SARS-CoV-2
has on people with certain preexisting immunities. A different study found
that there were strong differences in mortalities between Asia, the
Middle East, Latin America, and Western countries, suggesting that
genetic factors may also play a role in these disparities.
Although the extent of Taiwan’s governmental overstep and
tracking could be viewed as constituting an infringement on individual
rights and privacy, its lighter hand to Covid-19 management has proven
wise. The country has seen extremely low cases and – more importantly –
low death rates.
Its economic performance is projected to fare better than other countries. Taiwan is expected to experience a 0% growth rate in 2020 GDP – neither losing nor gaining in wealth – while US GDP is expected to contract by 3.5% in 2020.
The Lancet article draws on a significant conclusion
regarding Taiwan, “While some aspects of the Taiwan approach might not
be acceptable in other jurisdictions, the potential social and economic
benefits of avoiding lockdown might alleviate some objections.”
This statement gets at the heart of Taiwan’s strategy:
although the government may have overstepped relative to what was
necessary, it was able to minimize costs by not shutting down or
preventing all people from carrying on a normal life.
There are undoubtedly other reasons accounting for Taiwan’s success, such as its low poverty levels.
Still, Taiwan presents an important case study that warrants further
investigation. In 2003, Taiwan faced one of the highest SARS infection
rates in the world. Now, the Covid-19 infection rate in Taiwan is one of
the lowest despite the country not locking down.
The Taiwanese case reveals something extraordinary about pandemic
response. As much as public-health authorities imagine that the
trajectory of a new virus can be influenced or even controlled by
policies and responses, the current and past experiences of coronavirus
illustrate a different point. The severity of a new virus might have far
more to do with endogenous factors within a population rather than the
political response.
According to the lockdown narrative, Taiwan did almost
everything “wrong” but generated what might in fact be the best results
in terms of public health of any country in the world.
It is time for everyone to come out of this negative trance, this
collective hysteria, because famine, poverty, massive unemployment will
kill, mow down many more people than SARS-CoV-2!
Introduction: using a technique to lock down society
All current propaganda on the COVID-19 pandemic is based on an
assumption that is considered obvious, true and no longer questioned:
Positive RT-PCR test means being sick with COVID. This assumption is misleading.
Very few people, including doctors, understand how a PCR test works.
In medicine, we use this tool mainly to diagnose a viral infection.
Starting from a clinical situation with the presence or absence of
particular symptoms in a patient, we consider different diagnoses based
on tests.
In the case of certain infections, particularly viral infections, we
use the RT-PCR technique to confirm a diagnostic hypothesis suggested by
a clinical picture.
We do not routinely perform RT-PCR on any patient who is overheated, coughing or has an inflammatory syndrome!
It is a laboratory, molecular biology technique of gene amplification
because it looks for gene traces (DNA or RNA) by amplifying them.
In addition to medicine, other fields of application are genetics, research, industry and forensics.
The technique is carried out in a specialized laboratory,
it cannot be done in any laboratory, even a hospital. This entails a
certain cost, and a delay sometimes of several days between the sample
and the result.
Today, since the emergence of the new disease called COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease-2019),
the RT-PCR diagnostic technique is used to define positive cases,
confirmed as SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus responsible for the new acute
respiratory distress syndrome called COVID-19).
These positive cases are assimilated to COVID-19 cases, some of whom are hospitalized or even admitted to intensive care units.
Official postulate of our managers: positive RT-PCR cases = COVID-19 patients.
This is the starting postulate, the premise of all official
propaganda, which justifies all restrictive government measures:
isolation, confinement, quarantine, mandatory masks, color codes by
country and travel bans, tracking, social distances in companies, stores
and even, even more importantly, in schools.
This misuse of RT-PCR technique is used as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governments, supported by scientific safety councils and by the dominant media, to justify excessive measures such
as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, the
destruction of the economy with the bankruptcy of entire active sectors
of society, the degradation of living conditions for a large number of
ordinary citizens, under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients.
Technical aspects: to better understand and not be manipulated
The PCR technique was developed by chemist Kary B. Mullis in 1986. Kary Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993.
Although this is disputed, Kary Mullis himself is said to have criticized the interest of PCR as a diagnostic tool for an infection, especially a viral one.
He stated that if PCR was a good tool for research, it was a very bad tool in medicine, in the clinic.
Mullis was referring to the AIDS virus (HIV retrovirus or HIV),
before the COVID-19 pandemic, but this opinion on the limitation of the
technique in viral infections, by its creator, cannot be dismissed out
of hand; it must be taken into account!
PCR was perfected in 1992.
As the analysis can be performed in real time, continuously, it becomes RT (Real-Time) – PCR, even more efficient.
It can be done from any molecule, including those of the living, the nucleic acids that make up the genes:
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
RNA (Ribonucleic Acid)
Viruses are not considered as “living” beings, they are packets of information (DNA or RNA) forming a genome.
It is by an amplification technique (multiplication) that the molecule sought is highlighted and this point is very important.
RT-PCR is an amplification technique.
If there is DNA or RNA of the desired element in a sample, it is not identifiable as such.
This DNA or RNA must be amplified (multiplied) a certain number of times,
sometimes a very large number of times, before it can be detected. From
a minute trace, up to billions of copies of a specific sample can be
obtained, but this does not mean that there is all that amount in the
organism being tested.
In the case of COVID-19, the element sought by RT-PCR is SARS-CoV-2, an RNA virus.
There are DNA viruses such as Herpes and Varicella viruses.
The most well known RNA viruses, in addition to coronaviruses, are Influenza, Measles, EBOLA, ZIKA viruses.
In the case of SARS-CoV-2, RNA virus, an additional specific step is
required, a transcription of RNA into DNA by means of an enzyme, Reverse
Transcriptase.
This step precedes the amplification phase.
It is not the whole virus that is identified, but sequences of its viral genome.
This does not mean that this gene sequence, a fragment of the virus,
is not specific to the virus being sought, but it is an important nuance
nonetheless:
RT-PCR does not reveal any virus, but only parts, specific gene sequences of the virus.
At the beginning of the year, the SARS-CoV-2 genome was sequenced.
It consists of about 30,000 base pairs. The nucleic acid (DNA-RNA),
the component of the genes, is a sequence of bases. In comparison, the
human genome has more than 3 billion base pairs.
Teams are continuously monitoring the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2
viral genome as it evolves, through the mutations it undergoes. Today,
there are many variants.
By taking a few specific genes from the SARS-CoV-2 genome, it is
possible to initiate RT-PCR on a sample from the respiratory tract.
For COVID-19 disease, which has a nasopharyngeal (nose) and
oropharyngeal (mouth) entry point, the sample should be taken from the
upper respiratory tract as deeply as possible in order to avoid
contamination by saliva in particular.
All the people tested said that it is very painful.
The Gold Standard (preferred site for sampling) is the nasopharyngeal (nasal) approach, the most painful route.
If there is a contraindication to the nasal approach, or preferably
to the individual being tested, depending on the official organs, the
oropharyngeal approach (through the mouth) is also acceptable. The test
may trigger a nausea/vomiting reflex in the individual being tested.
Normally, for the result of an RT-PCR test to be considered reliable, amplification from3 different genes (primers) of the virus under investigation is required.
“The primers are single-stranded DNA sequences specific
to the virus. They guarantee the specificity of the amplification
reaction. »
The essential notion of Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold or Ct positivity threshold [16].
An RT-PCR test is negative (no traces of the desired element) or positive (presence of traces of the desired element).
However, even if the desired element is present in a minute,
negligible quantity, the principle of RT-PCR is to be able to finally
highlight it by continuing the amplification cycles as much as
necessary.
RT-PCR can push up to 60 amplification cycles, or even more!
Here is how it works:
Cycle 1: target x 2 (2 copies)
Cycle 2: target x 4 (4 copies)
Cycle 3: target x 8 (8 copies)
Cycle 4: target x 16 (16 copies)
Cycle 5; target x 32 (32 copies)
Etc exponentially up to 40 to 60 cycles!
When we say that the Ct (Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold or RT-PCR
positivity threshold) is equal to 40, it means that the laboratory has
used 40 amplification cycles, i.e. obtained 240 copies.
This is what underlies the sensitivity of the RT-PCR assay.
While it is true that in medicine we like to have high specificity
and sensitivity of the tests to avoid false positives and false
negatives, in the case of COVID-19 disease, this hypersensitivity of the
RT-PCR test caused by the number of amplification cycles used has
backfired.
This over-sensitivity of the RT-PCR test is deleterious and misleading!
It detaches us from the medical reality which must remain based on
the real clinical state of the person: is the person ill, does he or she
have symptoms?
That is the most important thing!
As I said at the beginning of the article, in medicine we always
start from the person: we examine him/her, we collect his/her symptoms
(complaints-anamnesis) and objective clinical signs (examination) and on
the basis of a clinical reflection in which scientific knowledge and
experience intervene, we make diagnostic hypotheses.
Only then do we prescribe the most appropriate tests, based on this clinical reflection.
We constantly compare the test results with the patient’s clinical condition (symptoms and signs), which takes precedence over everything else when it comes to our decisions and treatments.
Today, our governments, supported by their scientific safety advice,
are making us do the opposite and put the test first, followed by a
clinical reflection necessarily influenced by this prior test, whose
weaknesses we have just seen, particularly its hypersensitivity.
None of my clinical colleagues can contradict me.
Apart from very special cases such as genetic screening for certain
categories of populations (age groups, sex) and certain cancers or
family genetic diseases, we always work in this direction: from the
person (symptoms, signs) to the appropriate tests, never the other way
around.
This is the conclusion of an article in the Swiss Medical Journal
(RMS) published in 2007, written by doctors Katia Jaton and Gilbert
Greub microbiologists from the University of Lausanne :
“To interpret the result of a PCR, it is essential that
clinicians and microbiologists share their experiences, so that the
analytical and clinical levels of interpretation can be combined.”
It would be indefensible to give everyone an electrocardiogram to screen everyone who might have a heart attack one day.
On the other hand, in certain clinical contexts or on the basis of
specific evocative symptoms, there, yes, an electrocardiogram can be
beneficial.
Back to RT-PCR and Ct (Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold).
In the case of an infectious disease, especially a viral one, the notion of contagiousness is another important element.
Since some scientific circles consider that an asymptomatic person
can transmit the virus, they believe it is important to test for the
presence of virus, even if the person is asymptomatic, thus extending
the indication of RT-PCR to everyone.
Are RT-PCR tests good tests for contagiousness?
This question brings us back to the notion of viral load and therefore Ct.
The relationship between contagiousness and viral load is disputed by
some people and no formal proof, to date, allows us to make a decision.
However, common sense gives obvious credence to the notion that the more virus a person has inside him or her, especially in the upper airways (oropharynx and nasopharynx), with symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, the higher the risk of contagiousness, proportional to the viral load and the importance of the person’s symptoms.
This is called common sense, and although modern
medicine has benefited greatly from the contribution of science through
statistics and Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), it is still based
primarily on common sense, experience and empiricism.
Medicine is the art of healing.
No test measures the amount of virus in the sample!
RT-PCR is qualitative: positive (presence of the virus) or negative (absence of the virus).
This notion of quantity, therefore of viral load, can be estimated
indirectly by the number of amplification cycles (Ct) used to highlight
the virus sought.
The lower the Ct used to detect the virus fragment, the higher the viral load is considered to be (high).
The higher the Ct used to detect the virus fragment, the lower the viral load is considered to be (low).
Thus, the French National Reference Centre (CNR), in the acute phase
of the pandemic, estimated that the peak of viral shedding occurred at
the onset of symptoms, with an amount of virus corresponding to approximately 108 (100 million) copies of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA on
average (French COVID-19 cohort data) with a variable duration of
shedding in the upper airways (from 5 days to more than 5 weeks) [19].
This number of 108 (100 million) copies/μl corresponds to a very low Ct.
A Ct of 32 corresponds to 10-15 copies/μl.
A Ct of 35 corresponds to about 1 copy/μl.
Above Ct 35, it becomes impossible to isolate a complete virus sequence and culture it!
In France and in most countries, Ct levels above 35, even 40, are still used even today!
The French Society of Microbiology (SFM) issued an opinion on
September 25, 2020 in which it does not recommend quantitative results,
and it recommends to make positive up to a Ct of 37 for a single gene
[20]!
With 1 copy/μl of a sample (Ct 35), without cough, without symptoms, one can understand why all these doctors and scientists say that a positive RT-PCR test means nothing, nothing at all in terms of medicine and clinic!
Positive RT-PCR tests, without any mention of Ct or its relation to
the presence or absence of symptoms, are used as is by our governments
as the exclusive argument to apply and justify their policy of severity,
austerity, isolation and aggression of our freedoms, with the
impossibility to travel, to meet, to live normally!
There is no medical justification for these decisions, for these governmental choices!
In an article published on the website of the New York Times (NYT) on
Saturday, August 29, American experts from Harvard University are
surprised that RT-PCR tests as practiced can serve as tests of
contagiousness, even more so as evidence of pandemic progression in the
case of SARS-CoV-2 infection [21].
According to them, the threshold (Ct) considered results in positive
diagnoses in people who do not represent any risk of transmitting the
virus!
The binary “yes/no” answer is not enough, according to this epidemiologist from the Harvard University School of Public Health.
“It’s the amount of virus that should dictate the course of action for each patient tested. »
The amount of virus (viral load); but also and above all the clinical state, symptomatic or not of the person!
This calls into question the use of the binary result of this RT-PCR test to determine whether a person is contagious and must follow strict isolation measures.
“We are going to put tens of thousands of people in confinement, in isolation, for nothing. » [22]. 22] And inflict suffering, anguish, economic and psychological dramas by the thousands!
Most RT-PCR tests set the Ct at 40, according to the NYT. Some set it at 37.
“Tests with such high thresholds (Ct) may not only
detect live virus but also gene fragments, remnants of an old infection
that do not represent any particular danger,” the experts said.
A virologist at the University of California admits that an RT-PCR test with a Ct greater than 35 is too sensitive. “A more reasonable threshold would be between 30 and 35,” she adds.
Almost no laboratory specifies the Ct (number of amplification cycles
performed) or the number of copies of viral RNA per sample μl.
Here is an example of a laboratory result (approved by Sciensano, the
Belgian national reference center) in an RT-PCR negative patient:
No mention of Ct.
In the NYT, experts compiled three datasets with officials from the
states of Massachusetts, New York and Nevada that mention them.
Conclusion?
“Up to 90% of the people who tested positive did not carry a virus. »
The Wadworth Center, a New York State laboratory, analyzed the
results of its July tests at the request of the NYT: 794 positive tests
with a Ct of 40.
“With a Ct threshold of 35, approximately half of these PCR tests would no longer be considered positive,” said the NYT.
“And about 70% would no longer be considered positive with a Ct of 30! “
In Massachusetts, between 85 and 90% of people who tested positive in July with a Ct of 40 would have been considered negative with a Ct of 30, adds the NYT. And
yet, all these people had to isolate themselves, with all the dramatic
psychological and economic consequences, while they were not sick and
probably not contagious at all.
I remind you that from Ct 32 onwards, it becomes very difficult to
culture the virus or to extract a complete sequence, which shows the
completely artificial nature of this positivity of the test, with such
high Ct levels, above 30.
Similar results were reported by researchers from the UK Public Health Agency in an article published on August 13 in Eurosurveillance: “The probability of culturing the virus drops to 8% in samples with Ct levels above 35.”
In addition, currently, the National Reference Center in France only
evaluates the sensitivity of commercially available reagent kits, not
their specificity: serious doubts persist about the possibility of
cross-reactivity with viruses other than SARS-CoV-2, such as other
benign cold coronaviruses.
It is potentially the same situation in other countries, including Belgium.
Similarly, mutations in the virus may have invalidated certain
primers (genes) used to detect SARS-CoV-2: the manufacturers give no
guarantees on this, and if the AFP fast-checking journalists tell you
otherwise, test their good faith by asking for these guarantees, these
proofs.
If they have nothing to hide and if what I say is false, this guarantee will be provided to you and will prove their good faith.
We must demand that the RT-PCR results be returned mentioning the Ct used because beyond Ct 30, a positive RT-PCR test means nothing.
We must listen to the scientists and doctors, specialists, virologists who recommend the use of adapted Ct, lower, at 30. An alternative is to obtain the number of copies of viral RNA/μl or /ml sample.
We need to go back to the patient, to the person, to his or her clinical condition (presence or absence of symptoms) and from there to judge the appropriateness of testing and the best way to interpret the result.
Until there is a better rationale for PCR screening, with a
known and appropriate Ct threshold, an asymptomatic person should not be
tested in any way.
Even a symptomatic person should not automatically be tested, as long as they can place themselves in isolation for 7 days.
Let’s stop this debauchery of RT-PCR testing at too high Ct levels and return to clinical, quality medicine.
Once we understand how RT-PCR testing works, it becomes impossible to
let the current government routine screening strategy, inexplicably
supported by the virologists in the safety councils, continue.
My hope is that, finally, properly informed, more and more people will demand that this strategy be stopped,
because it is all of us, enlightened, guided by real benevolence and
common sense, who must decide our collective and individual destinies.
No one else should do it for us, especially when we realize that those who decide are no longer reasonable or rational.
Summary of important points :
The RT-PCR test is a laboratory diagnostic technique that is not well suited to clinical medicine.
It is a binary, qualitative diagnostic technique that confirms
(positive test) or not (negative test) the presence of an element in the
medium being analyzed. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the element is a
fragment of the viral genome, not the virus itself.
In medicine, even in an epidemic or pandemic situation, it is
dangerous to place tests, examinations, techniques above clinical
evaluation (symptoms, signs). It is the opposite that guarantees quality
medicine.
The main limitation (weakness) of the RT-PCR test, in the current
pandemic situation, is its extreme sensitivity (false positive) if a
suitable threshold of positivity (Ct) is not chosen. Today, experts
recommend using a maximum Ct threshold of 30.
This Ct threshold must be informed with the positive RT-PCR result
so that the physician knows how to interpret this positive result,
especially in an asymptomatic person, in order to avoid unnecessary
isolation, quarantine, psychological trauma.
In addition to mentioning the Ct used, laboratories must continue to
ensure the specificity of their detection kits for SARS-CoV-2, taking
into account its most recent mutations, and must continue to use three
genes from the viral genome being studied as primers or, if not, mention
it.
Overall Conclusion
Is the obstinacy of governments to use the current disastrous strategy, systematic screening by RT-PCR, due to ignorance?
Is it due to stupidity?
To a kind of cognitive trap trapping their ego?
In any case, we should be able to question them, and if among the
readers of this article there are still honest journalists, or naive
politicians, or people who have the possibility to question our rulers,
then do so, using these clear and scientific arguments.
It is all the more incomprehensible that our rulers have surrounded
themselves with some of the most experienced specialists in these
matters.
Why continue in this distorted direction, obstinately making mistakes?
It is not insignificant to reimpose confinements, curfews,
quarantines, reduced social bubbles, to shake up again our shaky
economies, to plunge entire families into precariousness, to sow so much
fear and anxiety generating a real state of post-traumatic stress
worldwide, to reduce access to care for other pathologies that
nevertheless reduce life expectancy much more than COVID-19!
Is there intent to harm?
Is there an intention to use the alibi of a pandemic to move
humanity towards an outcome it would otherwise never have accepted? In
any case, not like that!
Would this hypothesis, which modern censors will hasten to label “conspiracy”, be the most valid explanation for all this?
Indeed, if we draw a straight line from the present events, if they
are maintained, we could find ourselves once again confined with
hundreds, thousands of human beings forced to remain inactive, which,
for the professions of catering, entertainment, sales, fairgrounds,
itinerants, canvassers, risks being catastrophic with bankruptcies,
unemployment, depression, suicides by the hundreds of thousands.
The impact on education, on our children, on teaching, on medicine
with long planned care, operations, treatments to be cancelled,
postponed, will be profound and destructive.
“We risk a looming food crisis if action is not taken quickly.”
It is time for everyone to come out of this negative trance, this collective hysteria, because famine, poverty, massive unemployment will kill, mow down many more people than SARS-CoV-2!
Does all this make sense in the face of a disease that is
declining, over-diagnosed and misinterpreted by this misuse of overly
sensitively calibrated PCR tests?
For many, the continuous wearing of the mask seems to have become a new norm.
Even if it is constantly downplayed by some health professionals and
fact-checking journalists, other doctors warn of the harmful
consequences, both medical and psychological, of this hygienic obsession
which, maintained permanently, is in fact an abnormality!
What a hindrance to social relations, which are the true foundation of a physically and psychologically healthy humanity!
Some dare to find all this normal, or a lesser price to pay in the face of the pandemic of positive PCR tests.
Isolation, distancing, masking of the face, impoverishment of
emotional communication, fear of touching and kissing even within
families, communities, between relatives…
Spontaneous gestures of daily life hindered and replaced by mechanical and controlled gestures …
Terrified children, kept in permanent fear and guilt…
All this will have a deep, lasting and negative impact on human
organisms, in their physical, mental, emotional and representation of
the world and society.
This is not normal!
We cannot let our rulers, for whatever reason, organize our collective suicide any longer.
Translated from French by Global Research. Original source: Mondialisation.ca
Pretend for a minute that you do not really care who wins the US election... or worse, that it doesn't really matters...
Then remember the words of Mencken: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more
and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire
at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
A gaming exercise of the perfect, indigenous color
revolution, code-named Blue, was leaked from a major think tank
established in the imperial lands that first designed the color
revolution concept.
Not all the information disclosed here about the gaming of Blue has
been declassified. That may well elicit a harsh response from the Deep
State, even as a similar scenario was gamed by an outfit called
Transition Integrity Project.
Both scenarios should qualify as predictive programming –
with the Deep State preparing the general public, in advance, for
exactly how things will play out.
The standard color revolution playbook rules usually start in the
capital city of nation-state X, during an election cycle, with freedom
fighting “rebels” enjoying full national and international media
support.
Blue concerns a presidential election in the Hegemon. In
the gaming exercise, the incumbent president, codenamed Buffoon, was
painted Red. The challenger, codenamed Corpse, was painted Blue.
Blue – the exercise – went up a notch because, compared to its predecessors, the starting point was not a mere insurgency, but a pandemic.
Not any pandemic, but a really serious, bad to the bone global pandemic
with an explosive infection fatality rate of less than 1%.
By a fortunate coincidence, the lethal pandemic allowed Blue
operators to promote mail-in ballots as the safest, socially distant
voting procedure.
That connected with a rash of polls predicting an all but inevitable Blue win in the election – even a Blue Wave.
The premise is simple: take down the economy and deflate a
sitting president whose stated mission is to drive a booming economy. In
tandem, convince public opinion that actually getting to the polls is a
health hazard.
The Blue production committee takes no chances, publicly announcing
they would contest any result that contradicts the prepackaged outcome:
Blue’s final victory in a quirky, anachronistic, anti-direct democracy
body called the “electoral college”.
If Red somehow wins, Blue would wait until every vote is counted and
duly litigated to every jurisdiction level. Relying on massive media
support and social media marketing propelled to saturation levels, Blue proclaims that “under no scenario” Red would be allowed to declare victory.
Countdown to magic voting
Election Day comes. Vote counting is running
smoothly – mail-in count, election day count, up to the minute tallies –
but mostly favoring Red, especially in three states always essential
for capturing the presidency. Red is also leading in what is
characterized as “swing states”.
But then, just as a TV network prematurely calls a supposedly
assured Red state for Blue, all vote counting stops before midnight in
major urban areas in key swing states under Blue governors, with Red in
the lead.
Blue operators stop counting to check whether their scenario towards a
Blue victory can roll out without bringing in mail-in ballots. Their
preferred mechanism is to manufacture the “will of the people” by
keeping up an illusion of fairness.
Yet they can always rely, as Plan B, on urban
mail-in ballots on tap, hot and cold, until Blue squeaks by in two
particularly key swing states that Red had bagged in a previous
election.
That’s what happens. Starting at 2 am, and later into the night,
enter a batch of “magic” votes in these two key states. The sudden,
vertical upward “adjustment” includes the case of a batch of 130k+
pro-Blue votes cast in a county alongside not a single pro-Red vote – a
statistical miracle of Holy Ghost proportions.
Stuffing the ballot box is a typical scam applied in Banana Republic declinations of color revolution.
Blue operators use the tried and tested method applied to the gold
futures market, when a sudden drop of naked shorts drives down gold
price, thus protecting the US dollar.
Blue operators bet the compliant mainstream media/Big Tech alliance
will not question that, well, out of the blue, the vote would swing
towards Blue in a 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 margin.
They bet no questions will be asked on how a 2% to 5% positive
ballot trend in Red’s favor in a few states turned into a 0.5% to 1.4%
trend in favor of Blue by around 4am.
And that this discrepancy happens in two swing states almost simultaneously.
And that some precincts turn more presidential votes than they have registered voters.
And that in swing states, the number of extra mysterious votes for
Blue far exceeds votes cast for the Senate candidates in these states,
when the record shows that down ticket totals are traditionally close.
And that turnout in one of these states would be 89.25%.
The day after Election Day there are vague explanations
that one of the possible vote-dumps was just a “clerical error”, while
in another disputed state there is no justification for accepting
ballots with no postmark.
Blue operators relax because the mainstream media/Big Tech alliance squashes each and every complaint as “conspiracy theories”.
The Red counter-revolution
The two presidential candidates do not exactly help their own cases.
Codename Corpse, in a Freudian slip, had revealed his party had set up the most extensive and “diverse” fraud scheme ever.
Not only Corpse is about to be investigated for a shady
computer-related scheme. He is a stage 2 dementia patient with a rapidly
unraveling profile – kept barely functional by drugs, which can’t
prevent his mind slowly shutting down.
Codename Buffoon, true to his instincts, goes pre-emptive,
declaring the whole election a fraud but without offering a smoking gun.
He is duly debunked by the mainstream media/Big Tech alliance for
spreading “false claims”.
All this is happening as a wily, old, bitter operator not only had
declared that the only admissible scenario was a Blue victory; she had
already positioned herself for a top security job.
Blue also games that Red would immediately embark on a single-minded
path ahead: regiment an army of lawyers demanding access to every
registration roll to scrub, review and verify each and every mail-in
ballot, a process of de facto forensic analysis.
Yet Blue cannot foresee how many fake ballots will be unveiled during recounts.
As Corpse is set to declare victory, Buffoon eyes the long game, set to take the whole thing all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Red machine had already gamed it – as it was fully aware of how operation Blue would be played.
The Red counter-revolution does carry the potential of strategically checkmating Blue.
It is a three-pronged attack – with Red using the Judiciary
Committee, the Senate and the Attorney General, all under the authority
of codename Buffoon until Inauguration Day. The end game after a vicious
legal battle is to overthrow Blue.
Red’s top operators have the option of setting up a Senate
commission, or a Special Counsel, at the request of the Judiciary
Committee, to be appointed by the Department of Justice to investigate
Corpse.
In the meantime, two electoral college votes, one-month apart, are required to certify the presidential winner.
These votes will happen in the middle of one and perhaps two investigations focused on Corpse.
Any state represented at the electoral college may object to approve an
investigated Corpse; in this case it’s illegal for that state to allow
its electors to certify the state’s presidential results.
Corpse may even be impeached by his own party, under the 25th Ammendment, due to his irreversible mental decline.
The resulting chaos would have to be resolved by the Red-leaning Supreme Court. Not exactly the outcome favored by Blue.
The House always wins
The heart of the matter is that this think tank gaming transcends both Red and Blue. It’s all about the Deep State’s end game.
There’s nothing like a massive psy ops embedded in a WWE-themed
theater under the sign of Divide and Rule to pit mob vs. mob, with half
of the mob rebelling against what it perceives as an illegitimate
government. The 0.00001% comfortably surveys the not only metaphorical
carnage from above.
Even as the Deep State, using its Blue minions, would never have
allowed codename Buffoon to prevail, again, domestic Divide and Rule
might be seen as the least disastrous outcome for the world at large.
A civil war context in theory distracts the Deep State from
bombing more Global South latitudes into the dystopian “democracy”
charade it is now enacting.
And yet a domestic Empire of Chaos gridlock may well encourage more
foreign adventures as a necessary diversion to tie the room together.
And that’s the beauty of the Blue gaming exercise: the House wins, one way or another.
From the moment Donald J. Trump took office, I argued it was necessary that he face a rational opposition - with an emphasis on “rational.”
Discerning, targeted, evidence-based criticism would be imperative to
counteract against Trump’s worst impulses, I maintained at the time,
given his hardly-disguised penchant for blusterous, petty
authoritarianism. While of course Trump would be far from the only
president whose excesses needed checking - any occupant of the most
powerful office in world history would - there was at least some
reasonable cause to believe that his regular issuances of impulsive,
fly-by-tweet demands could eventually raise unique civil liberties
concerns.
In hindsight, I might as well have been arguing for a parade
of pinstriped purple unicorns to march down Fifth Avenue. Because the
concept of a rational Trump opposition was an utter fantasy.
Instead what we got right off the bat was blanket
“Resistance” to Trump, with the concept of “Resistance” turning into far
more of a self-promotional branding exercise than any kind of sensible
civic-minded disposition. Seemingly every word that came out of
Trump’s mouth, no matter how inane or innocuous, prompted wild
outbursts of blithering hysteria — egged on by the unholy profit-seeking
alliance of social media algorithms and TV ratings. In the imaginations
of his most excitable antagonists, it was taken as a truism that the
United States was perpetually teetering on the edge of total
Trump-induced collapse. Usually because he insulted a cable news host or
something.
To encapsulate this paranoid oppositional tendency, the
slogan “Resistance” was picked for a specifically self-aggrandizing
reason - having been derived from European anti-Nazi insurgent brigades
in World War II. As preposterous as it sounds that anyone of
stable mental health could have possibly believed present-day America to
be meaningfully comparable with Occupied France, this conceit became
near-ubiquitous within anti-Trump activism and media circles. Sure, some
who trafficked in rhetoric of “anti-fascism” probably did so out of a bizarre psychic need to
feel as though they were combatants in an epic battle to save
civilization from genocidal tyranny. But many also came to really and
truly believe it, with full-fledged sincerity — as I can personally
attest based on innumerable direct interactions with such people. A “Literal Nazi” president running literal concentration camps? Yup, that was a standard, uncontroversial viewpoint amongst the culture-media-activism industrial complex.
Clearly, to harbor such delusions about the nature of your
own country’s political circumstances was antithetical to the “rational
opposition” ideal that I’d initially floated. Combine it with
the storyline that Trump had been illegitimately installed into power by
a hostile foreign government — another profit-generating bonanza for
the corporate media — and any prospect of sanity being maintained during the 2016–2020 period was rendered completely hopeless.
As for civil liberties? The preservation of which is what I had
originally thought would necessitate a rational opposition? So much for
that. If anything, the overt reliance by Democratic partisans
and self-styled “Resisters” on officials associated with the CIA, FBI,
NSA, and other “intelligence community” has been an unbridled civil
liberties disaster.
With some distance from the day-to-day mania of life under Trump, it’s going to be impossible to deny that
these agencies intruded to an extraordinary degree in US domestic
political affairs over the course of the past several years. But because
it was largely done to the detriment of Trump - typically to create the
impression that he’s an agent of Russia, or at least benefitting from
their sinister so-called “interference” - the long-term consequences of
this development have yet to be fully wrestled with. Let’s just
say it doesn’t bode well for the future of civil liberties when
intelligence agencies seize autonomy to do whatever they please in the
political realm.
Those of us repulsed by this slew of anti-Trump tactics - despite
having no affinity for Trump himself, or the Republican Party, and no
reason to support his re-election - will have to reckon with a grim recognition if he goes down to defeat this week. Which is that these tactics will have been successful.
All the security state machinations, the blathering media tirades,
the incessant waves of phony moral panic, the needless infliction of
mass psychological turmoil - the constant fantasies and delusions that
obscured far more than they ever revealed about the country’s actual
problems - all of it will have been vindicated. Because
it will have been done in service of accomplishing the
desperately-craved goal that has been forefront in the minds of these
hysteria-purveyors every single day for the past four years: removing Trump.
Trump is routinely decried as a singularly menacing destroyer of democracy.
And at least around the margins, there’s probably a kernel of truth to
some of that. But the damage his opponents have done — arguably far more
significant — will reverberate long after he’s gone.
Please note, to observe this does not amount to making an affirmative case for Trump.
Irrespective of the insanity of his haters, Trump as the incumbent had
to deliver on the pledges he made in 2016, and then some, in order to
expand his coalition and have any hope of re-election. By and large he
hasn’t done that. Either way, he screwed up the federal response to a
pandemic, so it might’ve been a wash regardless. And just for the
record, Trump himself has certainly been more than happy to provoke,
troll, and needle his foes, so it’s not as if he’s blame-free in the
ensuing miasma of hyper-partisan craziness.
Still, if the “Resistance” is really on course to declare
victory tomorrow - barring some unforeseen shift or major polling error -
then we’re just hours away from the final vindication of their
off-the-wall tactics.
Trump may not deserve another term on his own merits.
But a loss for Trump is nonetheless a win for the lunatics
who’ve spent four years subjecting the rest of us an unceasing tsunami
of freakish nonsense.
It’s not like the consensus of a bunch of friends agreeing to see the same movie. Most often, it boils down to a kinder and gentler variety of mob rule, dressed in a coat and tie.
The essence of positive values like personal liberty, wealth,
opportunity, fraternity, and equality lies not in democracy, but in free
minds and free markets where government becomes trivial. Democracy focuses people’s thoughts on politics, not production; on the collective, not on their own lives.
Although democracy is just one way to structure a state, the concept has reached cult status; unassailable as political dogma.
It is, as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, “a surrogate faith for
intellectuals deprived of religion.” Most of the founders of America
were more concerned with liberty than democracy. Tocqueville saw
democracy and liberty as almost polar opposites.
Democracy can work when everyone concerned knows one another, shares
the same values and goals, and abhors any form of coercion. It is the
natural way of accomplishing things among small groups.
But once belief in democracy becomes a political ideology, it’s necessarily transformed into majority rule. And,
at that point, the majority (or even a plurality, a minority, or an
individual) can enforce their will on everyone else by claiming to
represent the will of the people.
The only form of democracy that suits a free society is economic
democracy in the laissez-faire form, where each person votes with his
money for what he wants in the marketplace. Only then can every
individual obtain what he wants without compromising the interests of
any other person. That’s the polar opposite of the “economic democracy”
of socialist pundits who have twisted the term to mean the political
allocation of wealth.
But many terms in politics wind up with inverted meanings. “Liberal” is certainly one of them.
The Spectrum of Politics
The terms liberal (left) and conservative (right) define the conventional political spectrum; the terms are floating abstractions with meanings that change with every politician.
In the 19th century, a liberal was someone who believed in free
speech, social mobility, limited government, and strict property rights.
The term has since been appropriated by those who, although sometimes
still believing in limited free speech, always support strong government
and weak property rights, and who see everyone as a member of a class
or group.
Conservatives have always tended to believe in strong government and
nationalism. Bismarck and Metternich were archetypes. Today’s
conservatives are sometimes seen as defenders of economic liberty and
free markets, although that is mostly true only when those concepts are
perceived to coincide with the interests of big business and economic
nationalism.
Bracketing political beliefs on an illogical scale, running only from
left to right, results in constrained thinking. It is as if science
were still attempting to define the elements with air, earth, water, and
fire.
Politics is the theory and practice of government. It concerns itself
with how force should be applied in controlling people, which is to
say, in restricting their freedom. It should be analyzed on that basis.
Since freedom is indivisible, it makes little sense to compartmentalize
it; but there are two basic types of freedom: social and economic.
According to the current usage, liberals tend to allow social
freedom, but restrict economic freedom, while conservatives tend to
restrict social freedom and allow economic freedom. An authoritarian
(they now sometimes class themselves as “middle-of-the-roaders”) is one
who believes both types of freedom should be restricted.
But what do you call someone who believes in both types of freedom?
Unfortunately, something without a name may get overlooked or, if the
name is only known to a few, it may be ignored as unimportant. That may
explain why so few people know they are libertarians.
A useful chart of the political spectrum would look like this:
A libertarian believes that individuals have a right to do
anything that doesn’t impinge on the common-law rights of others, namely
force or fraud. Libertarians are the human equivalent of the Gamma rat,
which bears a little explanation.
Some years ago, scientists experimenting with rats categorized the
vast majority of their subjects as Beta rats. These are basically
followers who get the Alpha rats’ leftovers. The Alpha rats establish
territories, claim the choicest mates, and generally lord it over the
Betas. This pretty well-corresponded with the way the researchers
thought the world worked.
But they were surprised to find a third type of rat as well: the
Gamma. This creature staked out a territory and chose the pick of the
litter for a mate, like the Alpha, but didn’t attempt to dominate the
Betas. A go-along-get-along rat. A libertarian rat, if you will.
My guess, mixed with a dollop of hope, is that as society becomes
more repressive, more Gamma people will tune in to the problem and drop
out as a solution. No, they won’t turn into middle-aged hippies
practicing basket weaving and bead stringing in remote communes. Rather,
they will structure their lives so that the government—which is to say
taxes, regulations, and inflation—is a non-factor. Suppose they gave a
war and nobody came? Suppose they gave an election and nobody voted,
gave a tax and nobody paid, or imposed a regulation and nobody obeyed
it?
Libertarian beliefs have a strong following among Americans, but the
Libertarian Party has never gained much prominence, possibly because
the type of people who might support it have better things to do with
their time than vote. And if they believe in voting, they tend to feel
they are “wasting” their vote on someone who can’t win. But voting is
itself another part of the problem.
None of the Above
At least 95% of incumbents in Congress typically retain office. That
is a higher proportion than in the Supreme Soviet of the defunct USSR,
and a lower turnover rate than in Britain’s hereditary House of Lords
where people lose their seats only by dying.
The political system in the United States has, like all systems which grow old and large, become moribund and corrupt.
The conventional wisdom holds a decline in voter turnout is a sign of
apathy. But it may also be a sign of a renaissance in personal
responsibility. It could be people saying, “I won’t be fooled again, and
I won’t lend power to them.”
Politics has always been a way of redistributing wealth from those
who produce to those who are politically favored. As H.L. Mencken
observed, every election amounts to no more than an advance auction on
stolen goods, a process few would support if they saw its true nature.
Protesters in the 1960s had their flaws, but they were quite correct
when they said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the
problem.” If politics is the problem, what is the solution? I have an
answer that may appeal to you.
The first step in solving the problem is to stop actively encouraging it.
Many Americans have intuitively recognized that government is the problem and have stopped voting. There are at least five reasons many people do not vote:
Voting in a political election is unethical. The political process
is one of institutionalized coercion and force. If you disapprove of
those things, then you shouldn’t participate in them, even indirectly.
Voting compromises your privacy. It gets your name in another government computer database.
Voting, as well as registering, entails hanging around government
offices and dealing with petty bureaucrats. Most people can find
something more enjoyable or productive to do with their time.
Voting encourages politicians. A vote against one candidate—a major,
and quite understandable, reason why many people vote—is always
interpreted as a vote for his opponent. And even though you may be
voting for the lesser of two evils, the lesser of two evils is still
evil. It amounts to giving the candidate a tacit mandate to impose his
will on society.
Your vote doesn’t count. Politicians like to say it counts because
it is to their advantage to get everyone into a busybody mode. But,
statistically, one vote in scores of millions makes no more difference
than a single grain of sand on a beach. That’s entirely apart from the
fact that officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want,
once they are in office.
Some of these thoughts may impress you as vaguely “unpatriotic”; that is certainly not my intention. But,
unfortunately, America isn’t the place it once was, either. The United
States has evolved from the land of the free and the home of the brave
to something more closely resembling the land of entitlements and the
home of whining lawsuit filers.
The founding ideas of the country, which were highly libertarian,
have been thoroughly distorted. What passes for tradition today is
something against which the Founding Fathers would have led a second
revolution.
This sorry, scary state of affairs is one reason some people
emphasize the importance of joining the process, “working within the
system” and “making your voice heard,” to ensure that “the bad guys”
don’t get in. They seem to think that increasing the number of voters
will improve the quality of their choices.
This argument compels many sincere people, who otherwise wouldn’t
dream of coercing their neighbors, to take part in the political
process. But it only feeds power to people in politics and government,
validating their existence and making them more powerful in the process.
Of course, everybody involved gets something out of it,
psychologically if not monetarily. Politics gives people a sense of
belonging to something bigger than themselves and so has special appeal
for those who cannot find satisfaction within themselves.
We cluck in amazement at the enthusiasm shown at Hitler’s giant
rallies but figure what goes on here, today, is different. Well, it’s
never quite the same. But the mindless sloganeering, the cult of the
personality, and a certainty of the masses that “their” candidate will
kiss their personal lives and make them better are identical.
And even if the favored candidate doesn’t help them, then at least
he’ll keep others from getting too much. Politics is the
institutionalization of envy, a vice which proclaims “You’ve got
something I want, and if I can’t get one, I’ll take yours. And if I
can’t have yours, I’ll destroy it so you can’t have it either.”
Participating in politics is an act of ethical bankruptcy.
The key to getting “rubes” (i.e., voters) to vote and “marks” (i.e.,
contributors) to give is to talk in generalities while sounding
specific and looking sincere and thoughtful, yet decisive. Vapid, venal
party hacks can be shaped, like Silly Putty, into salable candidates.
People like to kid themselves that they are voting for either “the man”
or “the ideas.” But few “ideas” are more than slogans artfully packaged
to push the right buttons. Voting for “the man” doesn’t help much either
since these guys are more diligently programmed, posed, and rehearsed
than any actor.
This is probably more true today than it’s ever been since elections
are now won on television, and television is not a forum for expressing
complex ideas and philosophies. It lends itself to slogans and glib
people who look and talk like game show hosts. People with really “new
ideas” wouldn’t dream of introducing them to politics because they know
ideas can’t be explained in 60 seconds.
I’m not intimating, incidentally, that people disinvolve themselves
from their communities, social groups, or other voluntary organizations;
just the opposite since those relationships are the lifeblood of
society. But the political process, or government, is not synonymous
with society or even complementary to it. Government is a dead hand on
society.
It’s likely to be the most important one in the country’s history, including that of 1860. Unfortunately, no matter how you vote, it’s unlikely to head off what history likely has in store for us. Something wicked this way comes.
