Thursday, 28 May 2020
Time to drop our illusions
But now we are to be branded with the hot iron of politics; we are going to enter the convict’s prison and to drop our illusions.
Honoré de Balzac - La Peau de chagrin (1831)
Has the coronavirus stripped life of a few more illusions? The obvious answer to this question is of course yes.
The entire lockdown mess based on flaky scientific guesswork about a new but moderate pandemic. A mess because we should have had the collective courage to shrug off the consequences as inevitable because the lockdown cost would be far too high. We lost an illusion there - the illusion of our collective courage. It has been a reminder of what our ancestors meant by courage too.
We have the prospect of creeping corruption and decay if democracies don’t have the courage or even the will to be democratic. Forcing people into lockdown was casually undemocratic when millions were under virtually no risk of serious health consequences. We knew it too - we knew it from the early Chinese data and it became increasingly obvious from our own data. We lost another illusion there, the illusion that a police state couldn’t happen here. We made the mistake of thinking in terms of jackboots and uniforms instead of quiet grey fascists sitting around a table.
What are we to make of a government which turns the entire country into a police state on dubious and easily contested scientific advice? Because whatever happens we shall never be able to demonstrate how many lives were saved. Or indeed how many lives were sacrificed to diverted medical resources because we can’t run the whole thing again and find out. That’s another couple of illusions gone – the illusion of scientific integrity and the illusion that anything political could ever be evidence-based.
Finally we have the illusion of responsible adulthood – we’ve lost that too. Contact tracing nonsense rushed in to keep the police state going in case it becomes too obvious that the virus is disappearing. Hence the need to bring in something new to hammer home the message that we shall never be treated as adults because we don’t vote as adults.
Illusions eh? Maybe we’ll find some more. Maybe we already have.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
We might have just witnessed the fatal flaw of our type of democracy. It makes governments weak and fearful, because - whatever their intentions - they have to remain popular to remain in power. So the real power passes to modern demagogues in the media, pointless celebrities, "experts" whose predictive capacities are near zero, and those who are able to push middle class bandwagons into motion.
The current government were the best of a bad bunch, but they didn't see the difference between governing with consent, and governing with constant assent. Unless the opinion polls remain high, and people like them, they think they have failed. Boris at least shows some signs of a bit more backbone, in his defence of Cummings. May he continue on that trajectory. Trump seems to be one of the few who are prepared to live with the hatred of others for the sake of his vision. Interesting times. If the chattering classes make the country ungovernable through their constant hyperbolic demands and outrage, I'm sure there are some less scrupulous figures and groups who would be prepared to govern far less democratically...
The diversion of resources by the NHS is an interesting one, there was a report, a low key one naturally about two weeks or so ago that came out with figures showing that equal numbers were dying from existing illness because of non treatment.
Needles to say there has not been another of that ilk, and figures are not easy to collate or compare because of the way that Corona virus is added to it seems all deaths in this period.
But it should and could come back to bite the arse of those in Health England the government and the NHS who deemed it a good idea to divert all to 'protect' an organisation that is paid for by the tax payer to protect them and failed miserably.
Sam - "they didn't see the difference between governing with consent, and governing with constant assent."
That's a good point. Might be surprising because this government has a comfortable majority and a long way to go, but they seem to dread even temporary unpopularity because of the way individual members of the government are targeted and picked off by the media.
Wiggia - it is an interesting one and yes, there are analyses suggesting that roughly equivalent numbers may have died due to lack of treatment. It could yet become a major scandal - we'll see.
" It could yet become a major scandal - we'll see"
The NHS manged to kill hundreds through neglect in the Staffs Hospital scandal (and probably does many more on an ongoing basis that are just never seen) and actually murdered patients in the Gosport Hospital case, and nothing was ever done about either, so I wouldn't hold your breath.
I often wonder exactly what the NHS would have to do to in order to generate enough public disgust that politicians were forced to enact root and branch reforms and bring criminal prosecutions of those involved. It can seemingly kill people with impunity so what on earth left is there?
Sobers - long odds I agree. I'd need very good odds indeed to put a bet on it and even then it would only be a small one. The NHS is clearly more powerful than the government which ought to make enough people think, but it probably won't.
Post a Comment