But, on this piece about it not being temporary: is the belief genuinely that COVID-related lockdowns are really just a nefarious ploy for introducing longer-term control in order to subvert our freedoms and usher in authoritarianism?
>Why is it so hard to recognize that governments like to give themselves special "temporary" powers and then not give them up?
No need to be condescending. I understand that it's happened in the past.
But, there's an "unintentional slippery slope" concern; then there's the "willful conspiracy" concern.
So, I'm asking whether, in this specific instance, people believe it to be the actual intent of the U.S. government to willfully and maliciously use COVID as a pretext for turning the U.S. into an authoritarian regime?
Again, yes. That is what some people believe. Maybe all these restrictions won't be in place forever, but some people believe that the government is setting precedent by putting them in place at all, and that they won't hesitate to do it again in the future in response to something far less serious.
Trust me, we all really hope we're wrong. But that's what we think.
Your stance is clear. Thank you. So, it appears we have two scenarios:
In the first scenario, the government is doing exactly what it says and taking the public health measures it feels are necessary to save lives and end a pandemic.
In scenario two, the government is deliberately overreaching and applying unnecessary measures, purely designed to deceive the public and curtail freedoms (or to condition people to accept such limitations in the future) in order to set us on the path to authoritarianism.
This raises a number of earnest questions:
>they won't hesitate to do it again in the future in response to something far less serious
The concern about it being done for some "future far less serious thing" seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that the current thing warrants these measures to some degree:
1. Given that these things aren't very frequent (i.e. the last pandemic of this scale was ~100 years ago and we've already rivaled that death toll), would it be more prudent to worry about hypothetical future abuses if/when they come to pass, versus resisting the current measures?
2. If we were currently dealing with, say, an equally virulent airborne strain of Ebola, would current measures seem more justified, thus significantly allaying your current concerns?
>we all really hope we're wrong
Me too!
1. What do you think the odds are that you're right (roughly speaking)?
2. What if the people actively resisting and interfering with government efforts to contain the pandemic are wrong? What is the cost?
3. How (or perhaps more accurately, when) will you know whether you are wrong?
I can help you out with your questions. Remember the #resist movement just from a year ago? It's just like that except instead of imaginary white supremacists patrolling streets to purge LGBTQA, BIPOC and Latinx, imaginary Russian agents infiltrating the government and imaginary Muslim ban we have real COVID compliance patrols, real Chinese agents in the government and real travel bans.
Those two scenarios of yours are not really mutually exclusive, at all. The government can both take the necessary public health measures and realize that those measures are rather drastic and can be used for permanent curtailing of public's control over government. Government is made out of many people, you know, so its overall intention is the combined intentions of people it consists of.
>Those two scenarios of yours are not really mutually exclusive
The difference between the slippery slope concern you're referencing and a willful conspiracy is significant to say the least.
This is why I first explicitly sought to clarify my GP's belief, which they emphatically confirmed as of the purposeful, malicious intent variety. In their view, COVID measures are merely a conspiracy, intended to transform the U.S. into an authoritarian state.
Professor Neil Ferguson: "It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realised we could."
That's a direct quote from one of the principal architects of the lockdown policy. He is, not coincidentally, in an open relationship with a member of the hard left Extinction Rebellion group, and the SAGE committee that he sits on which advises the government also contains a member of the British Communist Party.
The above are all unarguable facts. What you derive from them depends on prior intuitions.
> So, I'm asking whether, in this specific instance, people believe it to be the actual intent of the U.S. government to willfully and maliciously use COVID as a pretext for turning the U.S. into an authoritarian regime?
Yes, millions of Americans believe that.
It is also true that the Democratic Party is an authoritarian and corrupt government that is spreading corona throughout the US by opening the southern border to over 2 million illegal aliens in 2021, and allowing Afghanis to enter the US without corona testing or even a reason for admission. (The only quarantine restriction on Afghanis is if there's a measles case on the plane.)
Here's 10,500 illegals on Sept. 16 waiting under a Texas border bridge who likely have corona (the White House ordered the FAA to stop drone s from recording this because it's so horrific):
I'm with you that admissions should be merit based. But I suspect it's already difficult to go through the immigration system. The legal system isn't a firehose.
That said, thinking the immigrants are responsible for an uptick in Covid infection rates is ridiculous.
Also you're linking to Hannity and Ted Cruz. It's hard to take those seriously
I understand the lack of love for lockdowns.
But, on this piece about it not being temporary: is the belief genuinely that COVID-related lockdowns are really just a nefarious ploy for introducing longer-term control in order to subvert our freedoms and usher in authoritarianism?