One of the weirder aspects of the Covid panic was how every corporation decided they needed to do their duty with regards to panic. In many respects, they were the primary fear mongers, as people interface with corporations multiple times a day, while it is possible to tune out the government. For most people, the yammering meat sticks in the media are just the background noise of life. The corporation, on the other hand, is the safety rails of their life, guiding them as hey go about their business.
Shortly after the politicians declared mass panic, every retail chain was busy putting up signs, setting up social distancing protocols and training an army of harpies to lecture people about the need to be safe. The banal overhead music was replaced with endless chants about how much they cared and wanted you to be safe. Those declarations were followed by the robot voice telling you to obey the latest edicts from the CDC about social distancing and dousing yourself in alcohol gel.
The weird part about it was not that it was right out of dystopian science fiction movies where people live in high tech penal colonies. What was weird is no one noticed that we were suddenly thrust into high tech day care centers. The fact that corporations would take the lead was just expected. Something similar happened with the antiwhite pogroms launched after George Floyd. It was corporate America leading the war on white people through ads, TV shows, sporting events and movies.
Again, the remarkable thing about this is not that corporate America is hyper-political now, but that everyone just accepts it without notice. Here is a story by Matt Taibbi about YouTube censoring someone named Bret Weinstein. He walks through the travails of Mr. Weinstein and other Covid skeptics who have been harried by faceless censors on social media platforms. It is a weird blend of passive-aggressiveness and technological superficiality. It is Kafka meets Hal 9000.
The thing that Taibbi does not mention is why these companies suddenly think it is their duty to police what people say. All of the heads of these tech firms regular say they have a duty to police what people say on their platforms. The retail chains that decorated their stores with Covid stuff took the same stance. They were doing their duty by pushing you around in their stores. It was not profit or the satisfaction of their shareholders at the top of their list. It was your safety.
We have gone from a world where private companies should have the right to regulate what happens in their firms because property rights are essential, to a world where they must regulate what happens because the public good demands it. In the blink of an eye, all of corporate America is of one mind on all issues and they volunteer to be on the front lines of the fight over those issues. America is now a massive daycare center run by corporations acting like matronly old hens.
It turns out that C. S. Lewis got it exactly right when he said, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The custodial state turns out to be worse than the authoritarian state imagined by Orwell, because there is no face to the enemy. In 1984, it was Big Brother who ruled with an iron fist for his own sake. In the custodial state it is an invisible network of mother hens with unlimited resources. With one hand they dispense the pleasures of life and with the other hand they grab you by the scruff and make sure you eat your broccoli before leaving the table. All we see is the hand, never the face.
Because they are faceless, there is also no way to appeal to their humanity, their sense of fair play or the rules they claim to follow. When YouTube bans you from their platform, they issue a form of “Because I’m your mother and I say so” when you try to appeal their decision. When the bank shuts down your bank account, they make sure to inform you that this hurts them more than it hurts you. Declaring themselves a selfless nanny of the custodial state makes it all right.
The custodial state is the sensibilities of women armed with the weapons and power created by men. This is what lies behind the popular lunacies of Critical Race Theory, wokeness and white fragility. Every one of these is pushed by a thousand perfumed hands as a way to show how much they care for all of their children. Stripped of the Marxist jargon, it is nothing more than a mother standing over her children telling them to play nice and share their toys with one another.
In the Assemblywomen, the 4th century BC playwright Aristophanes described a world in which the women of Athens gained control of the government. Before long the city fell into a chaos that is familiar to us today. Men were wearing their wives’ clothing, ugly women were demanding that men see them as attractive and, of course, everyone was supposed to share their good with the community. In short order the normal rhythms of Athenian life give way to the chaos of female tyranny.
Aristophanes never explained how it ended, because it was just assumed that no such thing could last very long. That was what made the play a comedy. America will soon find out how a gynocratic custodial state ends. Maybe modern people are happy to sink quietly into the darkness of infantilization. Rather than take up their posts in the adult world, they prefer to live like children, a modern Eloi. The collapsing fertility rates and increasing dependency suggest the end of us is a form of crib death.
“‘It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life—the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure— had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!”
–The Time Machine
The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.
The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.
Now Abidin’ is talking about government officials going door-to-door to promote the “vaccines.”
Needless to say, I checked to see if my state is a Castle Doctrine one.
3
I’ve got a big ass Rebel flag hanging on my front porch. We’ll see if Dementia Joe’s Health Gestapo wants to knock on my door…
2
Keep your dog in. They’ll shoot it just to get a chubby.
1
Given Zman’s musings on the declining effectiveness of our “elites”, Millions, no, Billions of dollars will be spent and not one single door will be knocked. It’ll be a flourish of hiring for no show, no work jobs while our cell phones get spammed with reminders programmed and sent by H-1B contractors.
From my old home state of Silly-nois, $230 mil for “Contact Tracing” and Goodness Knows where the money went:
https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/some-raise-questions-about-states-230-million-contact-tracing-program/article_d96cbc66-db6e-11eb-9ed3-4ba69a3f7d1f.html
https://wirepoints.org/millions-still-being-spent-on-illinois-botched-contact-tracing-programs-and-their-end-is-far-off-wirepoints/
I mean, it’s not like it’s THEIR money, right?
Around here it will be like Dr Seuss’s “Bee Watcher Watchers”. 5 door knockers, 1 supervisor, 1 supervisor supervisor for every 5 supervisors and so on for 4 or 5 layers.
This will give modern day Americans some idea of what post Civil War Southerns felt like living with the carpet baggers. In the areas with the lowest vaccination rates there is no way they will find local people willing to go around knocking on doors to ask people to get vaccinated. They will be forced to ship in zealots from big cities and/or New England to do this job. You can imagine how that is going to go over in rural Missouri.
If there is any local levee work going on, think I have a hunch.
During this last winter of dire panic I noticed, almost every day, the “Mask-a-Boob” family parading down my residential street. The young husband and wife are both about the same height, and build: middling short, and pear shaped. The whole clan, husband, wife, two grade-school kids, and one in a stroller, are all masked up like zombies. I was out watering the lawn, the other day, when I saw them marching past. Since the mandate expired, they have become bold enough to wear their muzzles on the chin so that they can breathe real air. But as they drew close to my yard, the husband spotted me all maskless, and gave the command to his troops, “SHIELDS UP!” And his little star troopers quickly obeyed.
Thank God for what little self control I am capable of.
I was seriously thinkin’, “It gets the hose…”
JWM
9
They love the mask, they want the mask, they want to wear it forever. Come fall, with cold and flu season, mask mandates are going to come right back and that percentage of the population is primed and ready to go and is going to be happy to be a civilian Gestapo. I think last year is going to look like a cakewalk compared to what’s coming. Someone I know was told by her cardiologist that she can’t come and see him in person until she gets the vaccine. How is this not illegal? But I would imagine the FDA is going to approve by fall. Things are getting manifestly evil
4
I have to admit, I’ve found myself taking a sour but real joy in screwing with those types. I’ll be in the same aisle with one in the store, and suddenly I’ll find whatever product they’re looking at to be irresistibly fascinating. “Oh, have you used that before? My regular brand is Brawndo, but I’ve heard great things about this brand. Tell me all about it.” All the while inching into their personal space like an Arabian rug merchant. My goal is to eventually chase one all the way down an aisle and into the crosswalk.
5
The social media censorship phenomenon has an obvious explanation: Youtube, Facebook etc. are advertising media. They censor because their corporate advertising customers insist upon a “clean” medium through which to advertise their products. Corporations don’t want their deodorant ad next to Nick Fuentes’ video, or whatever….
This is the “marketplace in action” (lol, trademarked by the Koch Foundation or David French): advertising is more important than free speech to our Corporate Overlords. In fact, advertising is possibly the only speech with which they are even remotely concerned.
The limited liability, anonymous corporate form was invented to promote societal interests. We now have this upside-down; society exists to promote corporate interests. A pillar of the DR platform should be to limit the extent and purposes of the corporate form in a future rebuilt society.
2
Yes, I suspect that in these cases you’re right. It’s also why it is important to actually take stock of all the services you use, as well as the things you consume. It’s hard to boot stuff from your life, but I have personally found there is much that can be shed.
Effectively, for any serious dissident, these corporations are a cancer to be removed. Even if it means you can’t have a Coke (Anti-white) anymore. Perhaps this is the next step from seceding mentally, and the step before real-life community building. But they’re a cancer to be sure.
I got two robocalls yesterday, they were both from Rachel. It was a man’s voice, said its name is Rachel. Even the robots are transgender now. What is the point of that? Seriously what’s the point?
Might be a good time to revisit George Lucas’s first movie THX-1138.
5
“What is the point of that? Seriously what’s the point?”
To rub your face in it. To give it a good, long, automated rub.
That said, what’s more enraging: tranny robot calls or ‘Michael’ from Bangalore calling and telling you that Microsoft knows your iPad is broken, and can fix it for you.
It’s all so tiresome. I have been using this phrase a lot lately…
2
No kidding. Saw some LGBTQ%@… ranting the other day that refusal to date trannies was a mortal sin of bigotry and hate.
I saw it all the time with college kids. Supposedly natural rebels, they’re now the most passive aggressive little conformists on the planet. That’s what told me I was dead wrong about Covid. Even 20 years ago, it would have been unenforceable on campus. Kids would have found inventive new ways to shotgun beers with their mandatory masks — not for any ideological reason, but just on general principles. Threaten them, and you’d see a whole bunch of masks being worn as do-rags, chin straps, and codpieces. And so on, because that’s just what kids do…
Or, at least, that’s what they did. Now they’re all junior kommissars. They can’t wait to dime each other to the Thought Police. They love having “h8rz” on social media – that proves how special and fascinating they are – but any wrongthink and they’ll cheerfully burn you at the stake. That’s the future – imagine a teenage Mean Girl twerking on a human face, forever.
9
Perhaps the fatal flaw of the evolution of intelligence is terminal narcissism. Once a species becomes self-aware it inevitably becomes self-obsessed. Even my writing these words: am I doing it for you to inform, or for me to stroke my ego.
The answer to the Fermi Paradox is no intelligent species can stop looking at itself in the mirror long enough to move out into space.
2
I think our society today is more like Latka meets Hal 9000.
2
i don’t see any difference between politics & corporations, they’re the same people, the same agenda, there’s no headbutting, it’s a perfect cooperation. BlackRock employees get hired by states, then after a couple of years they return to their masters. You get the usual suspects playing both sides, republicans pretend they’re opposition when a few of their senators talk shit about fauci & china(the establishment needs some scapegoats), it’s just a bunch of kabbalistic bullcrap meant to distract the common people while they pillage the west.
3