Won’t Get Fooled Again – IOTW Report

Won’t Get Fooled Again

After the pandemic, Americans should never let public-health authorities deprive them of their liberties.

City Journal /John Tierney

More than a century ago, Mark Twain identified two fundamental problems that would prove relevant to the Covid pandemic. “How easy it is to make people believe a lie,” he wrote, “and how hard it is to undo that work again!” No convincing evidence existed at the start of the pandemic that lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandates would protect people against the virus, but it was remarkably easy to make the public believe that these policies were “the science.” Today, thanks to two years of actual scientific evidence, it’s clearer than ever that these were terrible mistakes; yet most people still believe that the measures were worthwhile—and many are eager to maintain some mandates even longer.

Undoing this deception is essential to avoid further hardship and future fiascos, but it will be exceptionally hard to do. The problem is that so many people want to keep believing the falsehood—and it’s not just the politicians, bureaucrats, researchers, and journalists who don’t want to admit that they promoted disastrous policies. Ordinary citizens have an incentive, too. Adults meekly surrendered their most basic liberties, cheered on leaders who devastated the economy, and imposed two years of cruel and unnecessary deprivations on their children. They don’t want to admit that these sacrifices were in vain.

They’re engaging in “effort justification,” a phenomenon famously demonstrated in 1959 with an experiment involving a tame version of a hazing ritual. Social psychologists Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills offered female undergraduate students a chance to join a discussion group on the psychology of sex, but first some of them had to pass an “embarrassment test.” In the mild version of the test, some students read aloud words like “prostitute” and “petting.” Others had to pass a more severe version by reading aloud from novels with explicit sex scenes and lots of anatomical obscenities (much more embarrassing for a young woman in the 1950s than for students today). Afterward, all the students, including some who hadn’t been required to pass any test, listened in on a session of the discussion group, which the researchers had staged to be a “dull and banal” conversation about the secondary sexual behavior of lower-order animals. The participants spoke haltingly, hemmed and hawed, didn’t finish their sentences, mumbled non sequiturs, and “in general conducted one of the most worthless and uninteresting discussions imaginable.” read more

13 Comments on Won’t Get Fooled Again

  1. NY Times article last week said that in fall 2020 schools should all have reopened, and that it was apparent at the time that they should do so.
    Bill Gates last week said covid is really more like the flu and we should treat it that way.
    Regardless of what life-crushing actions NY Times and Gates promoted over the past 2 years, this is what they now say – which means they can’t take it back for some ‘new variant’ which will be even less lethal than the last one.

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  2. The NYT, Bill Gates and other like minded creatures are essentially weather vanes on the left. When the wind changes so will they.

    From the very beginning I’ve been telling friends this was a scam. Some agreed with me, most didn’t. Unlike most of the scams, global warming, climate change, ozone holes and other doomsday scenarios, this one had immediate consequences with an inflated death toll to make it more scary instead of something that’s going to happen at some vague time in the future.

    Only really stupid useful idiots spend sleepless nights worrying about something that may happen a hundred years from now but when you might die tomorrow because you didn’t wear your mask, that gets peoples attention. Especially people that get their news from the LSM.

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  3. Bullshit! After the fake pandemic, a critical mass of Americans will still clamor for public-health authorities to deprive them of their liberties.

    I said in mid March of 2020 that by April Fools Day everybody is going to tell the public-health authorities to to fuck themselves and return to going about their lives as THEY see fit. Boy was I wrong.

    As for the critical mass that was totally comfortable with being told what to do, they want more of it. No amount of evidence will change these idiots minds.

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  4. Tierney writes from the position that the pandemic was a legitimate event, transparently occurring and responded to with sincerely meant but misguided actions. If this is the case then possibly investigating the policies followed and improving the strategies and tactics would make sense. Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests this ‘pandemic’ was not transparently occurring and was in fact made to occur for a variety of reasons one of which was political. The response to the ‘pandemic’ was not sincere yet misguided, it was deliberately destructive and in the political, allowed (often unconstitutional) changes to voting practices that created the circumstance allowing the leftists to steal the 2020 presidential and at least two senate elections.

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  5. In a few years or it may take a generation. these vaccines will result in Pfizer and Moderna going the way of Union Carbide after the Bhopal catastrophe.
    On the other hand, for about a year, we were all entertained by the comic duo to be forever known as The Scarf and The Midget

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  6. “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

    But we will.

    For it is the doom of men that they forget.

    And then satan just recycles his old tricks on a new generation.

    This will only get worse now that history is written on silicon, that can be changed by anyone at anytime.

    And it can all be blown away in a burst of EMP.

    And if you’re wodering who to weep for, look around the dinner table.

    “27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.

    28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

    29 For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.

    30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

    31 For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”
    Luke 23:27-31

    ” ‘If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising’.’And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,’ said Gimli. ‘It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.”Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,’ said Legolas. ‘And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.”And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,’ said the Dwarf.’To that the Elves know not the answer,’ said Legolas”
    -JRR Tolkien, “The Return of the King”

    https://youtu.be/qf0qVVbMckU

    “When they turn the pages of history
    When these days have passed long ago

    Will they read of us with sadness
    For the seeds that we let grow?

    We turned our gaze
    From the castles in the distance

    Eyes cast down
    On the path of least resistance

    Cities full of hatred
    Fear and lies

    Withered hearts
    And cruel, tormented eyes

    Scheming demons
    Dressed in kingly guise

    Beating down the multitude

    And scoffing at the wise

    The hypocrites are slandering
    The sacred halls of truth
    Ancient nobles showering
    Their bitterness on youth

    Can’t we find
    The minds that made us strong?
    Oh, can’t we learn
    To feel what’s right and what’s wrong? What’s wrong”
    -Rush, “A Farewell To Kings”

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  7. (sigh) I’ll burp it. Again. Cause I’m “one of those”.

    Most… as in more than half… of people are morons. At best. As in, they can’t see over the top of the “average” hill. Can. Not. See. Over. Average. Most.

    Now. Let’s vote. On who should rule us. All.

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