A Convenient Excuse

The plague has provided cover for a lot of nefarious maneuvering by power hungry politicians and their corporate backers. Many things that used to be self evident liberties are now only allowed by permission. Totalitarian measures have been put in place where freedom once was a matter of course. A cup of coffee at any café in Paris is now only permitted on display of a valid vaccine passport.

All it took was a virus marginally more dangerous than a common cold, mixed with a generous portion of propaganda, and everyone gave up their freedoms without a fight. All sorts of damage has been wrought by those in power, and the consequences have just started to show. There's more to come, and unlike the flu itself, this will be felt directly by everyone. There will be no need for propaganda to prop up this narrative.

China is using the plague as an excuse to shutter ports, thus disrupting supply chains. The real reason for these actions is not the flu, but deliberate sabotage of trade. China is at war with the US and the world at large, and its main weapon is economic destruction. It hands this out through propaganda and direct interference in supply lines. Propaganda related to the flu is dished out to the rest of the world where corrupt leaders distribute it to its population for personal gains.

Once the propaganda is accepted as truth, supply lines can be disrupted with the flu as an excuse, and the result of this will be shortages and higher prices. This phase of the war has just started, so the shortages and price rises are yet to come. The timing appears to be tuned towards deliveries in November and December when disruption will have the greatest impact, making Christmas hard on everybody.

The next step in the war is likely to be actual shooting. That will happen when the vaccines taken by US troops this fall kicks in with maximum damage. Demoralized and broken, the fighting spirit will be low. There will be an awareness that Paris is less free than Kabul, and that everyone is corrupt and a liar. Why bother to fight when the enemy is no worse than the people in charge?

However, things may not go as planned. There's a weakness in this that can be taken advantage of by those set on liberty. Shortages and price rises will distract from the flu and render the propaganda so much less effective. All we need to do is to keep our narrative low key and consistent.

Focus on a few facts, and stay firm. State the obvious whenever pressed: The plague is not very dangerous. The reactions are overblown and destructive. We suffer while gaining nothing.

This will fall on deaf ears now, but will nevertheless be registered in people's minds, and we'll be vindicated this fall. Our decision to stay unvaccinated will no longer seem so crazy. Our prediction of a hot war in the near future may even be listened to, as well as our reasons for staying out of any such conflict.

Liberty is found in our community more than in the nation state. It's the local culture that defines what's allowed and what's not, and this is on full display in Kabul right now. There are a few curious things to note about the Taliban takeover in Kabul. The first one being that the Taliban leader is of a very different kind than the Taliban leader of 20 years ago. Back then, the leader was a primitive cave man with no real vision of anything. Now, the leader appears to be very much a man of the world, with diplomatic skills and ties to both China and Russia.

Secondly, Afghan TV is still employing women. The crackdown on women, entertainment and music is not as fierce as we might have feared. Taliban itself appears to have moderated itself, and that can only be attributed to a shift in culture. For all its faults, 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan appears to have made an impact.

My guess is that the Taliban will see itself forced to moderate itself in cities such as Kabul. They will not do so willingly. But the alternative will be more intense opposition, which in turn leads to the sort of chaos that ruins a leader's international reputation. The Taliban leader is captured by his own ambitions. He must make sure that Afghanistan, and above all Kabul, remains relatively peaceful. To score extra points, the Taliban leader may push to make Kabul look more civilized than Paris. That would serve both the Taliban leader and his Chinese and Russian allies well in any upcoming war.

The lesson here is that we don't have to worry about external enemies, because such enemies will have to moderate themselves in the face of local culture. There's no point in going to a foreign land to fight for liberty. A far better strategy is to stay at home and make sure that the local community is well equipped to take care of its own. It doesn't matter who wins or loses a war in a distant land. All that matters is that we keep our community as strong and free as possible.

The real enemy in any war is not the foreign entity but our own nation state, which always seizes on the opportunity to restrict freedoms at home. Hence, a war of no direct danger to our community should be avoided. Not even a spectacular terrorist attack should convince us otherwise. It's not like the bombing of some building somewhere is of any great danger to a local community. However, we know that the inevitable over-reaction by the power hungry is a danger, and hence the real threat to our community.

Military victory or defeat only shines in the moment. There's no lasting legacy from such events. The culture remains as long as communities remain. The culture can even remain beyond the existence of the original carriers of the culture in question. This can be observed in countries like Hungary and Finland, where the local gene pool is German and Swedish respectively. However, the language and culture of these places remain different.

What happened in both Hungary and Finland was an initial clean sweep to power of an invading force from the east, followed by a gradual influx from the west. Hungary and Finland have seen no total victories on its soil since the initial onslaught some two thousand years ago, and remained thus culturally intact through the subsequent influx. The gene pool from the original invaders became in this way diluted to the point of being virtually nonexistent. But at no point were the original invaders slaughtered or driven to extinction. They married into the influx. The invaders still exist. They are merely diluted to the point of not being visible. However, the language and culture of these places remains strangely eastern. There's a fierceness to the Hungarians and the Finns that isn't mirrored in the Germans and the Swedes who act differently in the face of aggression.

As individuals, we'll all be diluted through our descendants. We will exist as long as there are descendants. There will also be legacy. Even those with no children will live on in the local culture. Hence, we should focus on this rather than battles and wars that only shine bright in the moment. Far better to do as the Hungarians and Finns have done up through the ages. Defend staunchly the local community and culture, and everything else falls into place on its own.

Liberty