Certain elements within society that want to deny the reality of Covid or seriously downplay its impact tend to focus on what might be called the dark side of Covid. This refers to the sociological elements and upheavals connected to the Covid epoch and while they've been exaggerated by some (and this line of discussion is often corrupted by a great deal of misinformation and even blatant disinformation), there is nevertheless something to it.
The problem is this. These questions are either being ignored
by one segment of the population – the group that takes Covid seriously, or these
'dark' issues are focused on almost exclusively even while ignoring the fact
that Covid is real and in the United States alone it has killed over a million
people. The official statistics as of March 2022 put the death toll at over
900,000 but this is certainly a serious undercount. The true toll is much
higher and has already surpassed the great influenza (or misnamed Spanish Flu)
pandemic of 1918-1919. The global death toll is (thus far) much lower than the
flu epidemic that erupted at the end of World War I, but in the United States
the toll is much higher. This indicates the mortality in the United States is
not due to a lack of medicine or available medical knowledge but is due to
sociological and cultural factors and resistance to mitigation efforts.
Covid is real and there are a host of medical, sociological,
and ethical issues associated with that fact and yet, it's also a social crisis
that some (on both ends of the political spectrum) are using to their advantage
and others seek to commodify the social and economic elements related to it –
including lives. Every side and everyone seems to have an angle.
After 9/11 we witnessed a re-ordering of society and in that
case it was one that was sponsored on a bipartisan basis though largely
championed by the Bushite Right-wing. There were restrictions and regulations
placed on economic activity. It marked the beginning of a redefinition of
privacy and eventually its elimination. This of course was furthered by
technological developments and through a comprehensive marketing campaign many
of these rights were (over the course of the next decade) voluntarily
surrendered. The government was granted new powers in the realms of
surveillance, the suppression of free speech, and the suspension of due
process. In just a few short years many of the constitutional amendments that
comprise the Bill of Rights were eliminated and the Executive Branch reasserted
itself on a level not seen since the advent of the nuclear age or even the
Civil War. There were sweeping constitutional issues as well as many practical
ones. Getting a bank account became much more involved, complicated, and
intrusive. Large swathes of public space were closed off forever changing urban
life. Air travel was transformed into a virtual totalitarian experience.
Twenty years later the now outdated War on Terror has been
abandoned and the entire democratic process has degenerated into something of a
farce. The crimes of the American regime so blatantly revealed by figures like
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are ignored and they and other people that
have sought to reveal and expose them are incarcerated or live as fugitives.
And yet for all the machinations and scheming of the American
Establishment their plans have failed, in some cases miserably so. And they too
are in a state of crisis as American unipolarity has evaporated and even now
its global hegemony is in grave danger. This is further amplified by deep
internal crises which seem to keep multiplying – driving those in power to
desperation.
There are some on the Right who see this and agree with much
that has been said thus far and yet they go further and lump in the Covid
episode as yet another swindle imposed on the public, another episode of
large-scale deception that some believe was even orchestrated. As I've argued
elsewhere, a deep reading of history and examination of events reveals there
are conspiracies at work and always have been. Americans are quick to accept
their reality outside US borders, but are often a little slow in understanding
that such things happen in their country as well. There have been
assassinations, cover-ups, and crimes committed on a massive scale. And there
are certainly conspiracies surrounding Covid, but the story here isn't about
some dark plot between American power brokers and the Wuhan lab or some kind of
vast orchestrated plot to implement a totalitarian communist society. Far from
it. The disease is real and has generated a great deal of grief to the American
Establishment which more than anything wants the public working, the supply
chain flowing, and profits being generated. For this to happen, kids have to be
in school, and elements of society (like teachers and health care workers) will
have to acquiesce to these realities and be willing to risk their lives and
face substantial mortality rates in order to keep the economy running.
The Establishment faces a series of crises that are reaching
a point of culmination. This was true before Covid – a crisis they didn't want
and certainly didn't need. The disease has simply taken things up to a new
level and has forced some elements of society into a virtual tailspin. The
regime is desperate for the economy to recover and as is evident from the wars
and rumours of wars, they are determined to recapture American supremacy and (killing
two birds with one stone) quell internal or domestic polarity by uniting the
country and channeling anger in the direction of an external threat and enemy.
Since the Ukraine War started almost nothing has been said about Covid and mitigation
funding is quickly being abandoned.
The US and in fact the larger West faces real problems in the
realms of population and stretched resources – an aging population at that, and
a consumer economy that is wasteful, destructive, and yet must keep expanding
(and consuming) or die.
There are serious problems in the realm of finance, threats
to the dollar as the global reserve currency, growing instability in the
economy and a dangerous severance between the economics of the finance class
based on speculation and usury and the economy of the street which increasingly
is becoming destitute and desperate. In fact it is so desperate that Covid has
broken the new (and somewhat brutal) financial and labour order established in
the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis with many lower-end working class
people at the breaking point and now seeking to re-order their lives and
re-think the nature of their family economics.
If there is a hint of truth to the 'Great Reset' narrative
that's run amok in Right-wing circles it's found here – in the exploitation of
Covid to reorient society's anger, blur the polarity, and establish mechanisms
to keep an increasingly unruly and dangerous population under some form of
restraint. The Right's narrative is largely fallacious and while there are
elements of truth to what is said and observed, the conclusions are twisted and
manipulated by these forces which have abandoned almost any pretense of
democracy and instead seek to capture raw power.
Additionally they forget that twenty years ago they supported
another Great Reset, a very real one. US Imperialism sought to re-order society
and the world in the aftermath of 9/11. The Right, (many of the same people who
right now are crying about the Left's supposed reset) supported the Patriot Act
and has for the past two decades resisted any attempt to dismantle it. Their
sudden concern for freedoms and totalitarian excess are mere political
posturing and disingenuous. The provincial masses for their part are subject to
easy manipulation. If the perceived threat is external they will quickly sell
all liberties. If threats are internal or rooted in a narrative that places the
onus on political opponents, they rage against it. The Trumpite GOP has
demonstrated a willingness to endanger the whole of society and even bring it
to the point of collapse simply to attain victory over their domestic political
opposition. It's a classic case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
And yet the 9/11 reset failed. Despite the fact that millions
have died since 2001 as a result of their machinations, the geopolitical and
strategic goals of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) failed. That
said, while PNAC was considered fringe in the 1990's, today their views have
gone mainstream and are represented on a bipartisan basis. The madness
continues – it's just more desperate now. The packaging has changed but large
swathes of the Establishment have embraced their overall goals – the recent
tensions (and now de facto war) with Russia, driven primarily by the DNC, point
to this unfortunate and dangerous reality. Given the changes to society and
technology, the Establishment's growing desperation in light of US hegemonic
collapse, the pressing problems of resources, and social nonconformity – there's
a push by these forces to reassert control and channel energy and resources
into preserving American supremacy and authority. This means war abroad and a
clampdown at home. It's that simple.
A new order is coming into place and the tragedy of Covid is
that it's sure to be one of its vehicles, one of its convenient (but at the
same time destructive) pathways to the implementation of its goals. And yet
even these measures have largely failed and in other cases gone completely off
the rails as they say.
And like the terribly misnamed Patriot Act, long after the
actual threat is gone – the measures will stay in place. But unlike the shadowy
and over-hyped al Qaeda network, the threat of Covid is real and deadly.
These nuances are too much for the masses and the
manipulators sweep in, re-craft the narrative and peel off large sections of
the distracted and increasingly incoherent and incapable public. There is a
conspiracy but it's not the one being presented. As is often the case, the
conspiracy is in the open and its implementation is in the long term. The Covid
episode isn't the conspiracy though
it's certainly to be used and capitalised upon.