Will we ever be free again?

I have just read an article on the AIER website that has given me pause for thought and saddened me. I like the AIER because it offers scepticism of lockdowns and the authoritarian direction western liberal democracies are travelling in, and competent economic analysis. I think a sound economic perspective on the events of the last few years, and perhaps the last two decades, is required to understand what is going on, because it seems to me, if we boil the motives of the technocrats down to their purest form it's all about money.

Still the article in question was not about economics, it was about politics. It was a good article, it just made me sad because it proposed, perfectly plausibly, that the time for standing up against what is going on at the moment, the technocratic, authoritarian direction of increased surveillance, health passports, central bank digital currency etc, may be over. What is happening is so widespread and has gathered such momentum, that, like surviving a tornado, we need to retreat to a small, safe, underground bunker and wait it out.

This makes some sense to me. When all this began in the UK I looked around me in astonishment as most parents made little fuss about their children being forced to wear masks in school, miss out on meeting with friends, and stop their scheduled activities. All these restrictions, not for two weeks or six weeks, but months at a time. I was also amazed that people did not fight to see their loved ones in hospitals or care homes.

It is difficult to talk of these issues without sounding as if I think I occupy some moral high-ground. I don't think I am morally superior to people who went along with these restrictions. My elderly mother died ten years ago and I cannot say for certain what I would have done if her care home had locked down and shut us out. Somehow I anticipated the direction of travel in the UK and took my family to another country in the autumn of 2020. If my mother had been alive perhaps I would have got her out of her home before they locked their doors. Of course if that had happened I would not have been free to flee the country with my children. I am glad that my mother was not alive to see the dreadful state of the UK and that I did not have to deal with that moral dilemma. I do not know how I would have come out of that particular trial. I remember seeing video of the police challenging a woman who was taking her own mother out of her nursing home and making the elderly lady go back. It was shocking. If I had been accosted by police while breaking my mother out of her home, would I have had the courage to stand up to them? I don't know. Even if I did would it have got me anywhere other than into a police cell, and my mother back to where she started? Would resistance have been futile? Would it have even served the purpose of inspiring others to resist? Or merely served as a cautionary tale, ensuring that people were even less likely to stand up because of fear of arrest?

These questions illustrate the point the writer of the article was making, namely is this direction society is taking too powerful to resist? Is it time to just accept that a storm is coming and all we can do is try to survive it? This is a devastating thought. My Twitter addiction and excursions down the 'rabbit hole' have all been inspired by the belief that just one more fact that exposes the lies of the narrative, one more act of resistance from a judge, a politician, a group of disgruntled employees, will be all that is necessary for this tyranny to start rolling backwards, but in more than eighteen months this has never happened. The fact, that the 'virus' was only dangerous to the elderly and those with very compromised immune systems, was known within the first few weeks and sufficient to bring the whole charade to an end and yet it wasn't and it didn't. Perhaps that was all we needed to know to realise this was never going to end quickly because it is 'not about a virus'.

It may not be the 'cabal', but there is a deep undercurrent of power that is keeping this tyranny rolling onwards. I think it is globalisation, the technocratic dream that power and wealth will be held in a few hands and that society will be entirely digitised and totally controllable, from massive, computerised food production, to programmable digital currency, to distance-limited cars, and humans that are totally trackable, and data-mined, from cradle to grave.

When it is boiled down to this, it seems difficult to see how it will be possible to wait this out. The globalist elites who want this techno-fascist future do not ever want it to end and once it is in place how will it possible for ordinary people, tracked and surveilled as they will be, to organise in a way to bring it to an end?

It is true that one of the aspects of this debacle that has shocked me the most has been the lack of resistance from the general populations of many of the countries in which this authoritarianism is taking hold, but I do not necessarily see this as a disaster. There will of course be a small proportion of the population who, for whatever reason, think this kind of totalitarian future is fine. They perhaps love technology, or want to embrace a future where they need to make no onerous decisions, and everything from the amount of exercise they take to the amount of salt they consume is controlled. Such people may want to live in a world where their very lives are like a game in which they gain 'social credits' for behaving in the way the government wants them to, and can see others down-graded for being less compliant. I am still enough of a lover of humanity to think the proportion of people who want this as their own and others' futures is relatively small, at most ten percent.

Then there are others who are not paying much attention and are not particularly worried about what is happening now, or where it may lead. They more-or-less believe the narrative of the health threat, the 'climate emergency', and so on, and believe restrictions on their lives are being imposed in good faith, to combat these existential threats. They are certain their freedoms will be returned once these dangers have passed. This is perhaps sixty percent of the population. A further twenty percent are uneasy but trying to ignore their fears, and then there are ten percent who are actively engaged with trying to understand what is going on and often lie awake at night in terror at what the future may hold. I count myself among that ten percent.

All of this is to say, that at the moment there is just not a large enough proportion of the UK population opposed to what is going on to bring it to an end. This is different in countries like France and Italy, and perhaps despite having the strongest restrictions, these will be the nations where freedom will be re-born. I hope so, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility yet. However too many people in the UK do not even know of the travails and resistance of the French and the Italians because they are not reported in the mainstream media. Those that do hear about it may dismiss it as Europeans being typically stroppy and difficult. I would not recommend battening down the hatches and merely waiting for the end in countries like France and Italy where resistance is strong. There it is still very worthwhile joining demonstrations and expressing your support of freedom and all criticisms of the authoritarian measures taken by the government.

In countries like the UK that are more-or-less lost I think it is necessary to consider your own mental health. If following all the twists and turns of this authoritarian takeover around the world is making you depressed, and if you are upset by the looks of incomprehension you receive from your fellow citizens when you try to put a view that opposes the prevailing narrative, it's alright to give yourself a break. Decide which battles are really important and save yourself for those, don't wear yourself thin trying to change the mind of the chap behind the counter at the corner shop. Try to find at least one person who thinks as you do and take support from them and give it to them in return. Make your life small and safe, with walks in nature, or drawing, or fixing cars, or whatever thing you love to do that absorbs your mind and soothes your soul, and do that as much as you possibly can. Trust in God if you can, if you do not believe in a god or gods, trust in history, trust in humanity that at some point the wheel will turn enough that freedom, individuality, love, hope, and humanity will come back.

There are some practical reasons for this hope. Firstly as software engineers, who know much more about technology than I, have attested, the technological development of centralised digital currency or a universal social credit system is not that easy. Secondly there is resistance in various parts of the world: France, Italy, Lithuania, Australia, and especially the US.

America may in fact be the key to all this. It is a large and varied country where there are many on the right who are comfortable with standing up to the authoritarian politics of the Democrats and progressive elite. It is hard to imagine America will easily fall to the kind of tyranny that is being attempted right now. Admittedly, some developments, like forcing companies to impose vaccine mandates, and suggesting parents who oppose shared bathrooms and the teaching of CRT in schools, are domestic terrorists, are very worrying. Still there is good reason to hope that the strong conservative half of the country will prevail in keeping totalitarianism at bay.

More generally there is also hope that, should the technocratic, digitally surveilled future come to pass, people will begin to understand what this really means. Once they are living it, even those who thought being paid a UBI to stay home and hangout in Mark Zuckerberg's 'metaverse' would be awesome, may begin to lose their enthusiasm. Countless millions who sleep-walked into it will wake up and decide they want out, as quickly as possible.

There is hope. If we choose not to resist every tiny tyranny, such as face-masks to attend the dentist or doctor, or to argue against every coronavirus orthodoxy expressed by people we encounter, we do not necessarily have to condemn ourselves as the good people standing by while the world goes to hell. It may just be that we need a break, we have to keep ourselves sane, we need to re-group. We must get through this, not crack under the strain, for we, as much as anybody, deserve to make it out the other side to the green, sunlit uplands of freedom.