The Correlation Between Medicine and Madness

           There's an interesting correlation between those that promoted vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and vaccine passports, and those that are advocating for military intervention in Ukraine to stop Russian aggression.  Many of the people calling for the West to go to war with Russia to protect Ukraine are the same people who have, for the past year, scapegoated and demonized the unvaccinated and were pushing for draconian vaccine rules so as to render the unvaccinated personae non gratae.  Furthermore, those supporting the idea of waging war against Russia are often the same people who - during the heights of the Covid propaganda campaign - failed to question if the threat before them with was being accurately presented by their governments and news outlets, and were eventually convinced that it was their civic duty to embrace mass vaccination.  Many who endorsed vaccine mandates and lockdowns - failing to question the broader implications of these policies (What if the vaccines have side effects? What are economic, social, and psychological impacts of lockdowns?  What if it doesn’t stop at just one or two shots? How can vaccine passports be misused in the future?  What if these policies fail to curb the spread of Covid or actually make the pandemic worse?) - seem to now have been whipped-up into a virtual nationalistic frenzy and are hellbent at the prospect of waging war against Russia to defend a country and government many have never heard of until last week, and are now failing to consider the ramifications of military intervention in a conflict halfway across the globe (What if the pretense to intervene is  base on lies?  What if intervening makes matters worse, like in Syria, Libya, and Iraq?)  We were told by the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex that the vaccines would not only protect us, but that to be vaccinated was an act of morality because you were protecting the vulnerable, and that “anti-vaxxers” who oppose mandates or those who support trucker convoys are anti-social and should be ostracized (if not worse).  Similarly, those who fail to question the sanctity of the Ukrainian government and are incredulous of mainstream media characterizations of the conflict are considered Putin lapdogs or enablers of Russian war crimes.

           Why is that during times of crisis people are willing to suspend their skepticism of the the motives of governments, corporations, and international institutions and agencies (W.H.O, U.N., E.U., N.A.T.O, etc.), that ordinarily warrant the utmost scrutiny?  (During Covid, we were supposed to believe that these corrupt drug companies who have paid the biggest criminal fines in history suddenly saw the light and reformed into honest and magnanimous actors.) Because if you don’t believe that your government is acting in your best interest in times of public health emergencies or wars, then you must entertain the alternative notion: that your government and the agencies that you have entrusted with your well-being are either nefarious themselves or controlled-by nefarious actors that despise you, or both.  People just don’t want to believe that our government and the institutions that they have put their faith in would act to harm their citizens at a time when their citizens need them most.  Like a self-defense mechanism which prevents them from shattering their perception the benign role of government, their faith kicks in and justifies a concession to these policies and platforms nomatter how irrational or insane they may be.

 

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch