Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[Shrieking Banshee]

The attempt to reject the banality of evil comes from a desire to not view evil as a thing humans are all capable of, but instead demon spawn that can be killed without need of self reflection.

[Pat]

There's nothing good about what those people are doing. Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil" after meeting Eichmann during the Nuremberg Trials. She was describing how unremarkable he seemed, and how he never showed any of the stereotypical signs of evil, like sadism, or hate, or anything except a desire to just go about his life and advance his career.

Eichmann was a charming and evil bullshit artist, and Arendt bought into his charming bullshit.

I hate that fucking phrase, there's nothing "banal" about the bureaucratic oil that greased the wheels of the Holocaust.

It's nice when evil wears an evil shirt and twirls their mustaches and talks about how they love evil, isn't it?

You watch too many Snidley Whiplash cartoons.

[Ratman_tf]

The attempt to reject the banality of evil comes from a desire to not view evil as a thing humans are all capable of, but instead demon spawn that can be killed without need of self reflection.

The easy lesson of the Holocaust is that Nazis are evil. The important lesson of the Holocaust is that we are all capable of becoming Nazis.

[Mercurius]

The real problem with conspiracy websites is that they serve mainly as counter-intel to ridiculize the very legitimate arguments about the abuse of institutions, which didn't cause Covid in some great Shadowy Cabal Master Plan, but who are taking enormous advantage of Covid for their own power-grab, as well as for personal enrichment.

It's being done by almost every government on the planet, by the nonelected bureaucracies of those governments, by establishment corporations and media, by teacher's unions, and yes, by the World Economic Forum. And the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away and much greater centralized control by a power elite. And none of that needs a secret master plan.

I agree that conspiracy websites are used in that way, and certainly there's validity to the notion that the idea of a "conspiracy theory" was created by the CIA as a means to invalidate any and all counter-viewpoints to the mainstream narrative, especially those that critique the CIA. In fact, I see this basic tactic employed all the time by the political establishments and their MSM pawns: you create a threat, or at least magnify it beyond any reasonable proportion, which distracts from the actual threats that exist (which also happen to be, imo, the very establishment that is employing the tactic).

But while none of what is currently going on regarding the pandemic requires a secret master plan, the absence of this requirement doesn't negate its possible existence. I mean, I agree with you that--at the bare minimum--what we're seeing is an immense power-grab. But it could be more than that, and I think there's good reasons to think there's more going on.

I'm reminded a bit of the Batygin/Brown view on "Planet Nine" - that while they haven't seen it, it would explain all sorts of anomalous behavior in the solar system. Now it is not the only possible explanation, and there's a valid counter argument for why it might be wrong (see Kevin Napier's study), but the point is that absence of direct or obvious proof (a smoking gun, or actually seeing the planet with a telescope) doesn't disprove something's existence.

I tend to think that the "truth" is somewhere between the cabalistic master plan and mere opportunism, that there is some degree of planning and orchestration, but the actual shape of it is not what most conspiracy theories think, or at least there's no way to specify what is "actually going on." I'm also leery of documents or manifestos that claim to know everything that's going on, or overly focus on any one, single theory or villain. I mean, if there truly is a master plan, chances are we wouldn't ever see the main perpetrators, only their middle-men and public faces.

[Mercurius]

The attempt to reject the banality of evil comes from a desire to not view evil as a thing humans are all capable of, but instead demon spawn that can be killed without need of self reflection.

The easy lesson of the Holocaust is that Nazis are evil. The important lesson of the Holocaust is that we are all capable of becoming Nazis.

Robert Malone touched on this in his conversation with Joe Rogan. Mass Psychosis Formation is a real thing.

That said, while I suppose it is possible that we are "all" capable of becoming some variation on Nazis, I think it is important to understand the various factors that make one more or less prone to be come Nazi-like. I think a lot of it has to do with a propensity for groupthink and demonization of the other. But it also requires a context of propaganda-fueled fear and dissociation. 

And this is also why I'm not writing off the "Master Plan Hypothesis": the situation is too perfect for the ushering in of some kind of "new world order."

[ThatChrisGuy]

It's nice when evil wears an evil shirt and twirls their mustaches and talks about how they love evil, isn't it?

You watch too many Snidley Whiplash cartoons.

If an SS uniform isn't an evil shirt what the hell is?

[3catcircus]

As for your position, Pundit... You say that "the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away". I'm trying to clarify what you mean by that. For example, my sister is part of the unelected bureaucracy - she's a deputy director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think she knows that this is the goal? If you don't think that, then who in the organization would know that is the goal? Basically, how would one go about verifying this?

No offense to your sister who I am sure is a fine person indeed but the SEC could not even find Bernie Madoff and that is supposed to be their one job.

So what do you think?  Corrupt or Incompetent?  A little of column A and a little of column B?

You think the entire purpose of the SEC was to find Bernie Madoff?

Of course not, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a U.S. government agency created by Congress to regulate the securities markets and protect investors so obviously its job is not to protect investors from histories largest ever Ponzi scheme.

That would be a silly conspiracy theory.

As with everything, the original purpose always gets corrupted.  The revolving door allowing people to work for the SEC one day and then work for the companies they're supposed to be watch-dogging the next day means that the SEC is effectively neutered so long as the companies they're regulating all agree to the same basic corruption. 

They didn't go after Madoff because they didn't want to know.

[Pat]

It's nice when evil wears an evil shirt and twirls their mustaches and talks about how they love evil, isn't it?

You watch too many Snidley Whiplash cartoons.

If an SS uniform isn't an evil shirt what the hell is?

How many of the right-thinking people who thought themselves good and moral in the 1930s thought an SS uniform was the embodiment of evil? None of them. At that time, the people who were anti-Nazi were ostracized and treated as a wackos. It wasn't until later that until public opinion flipped and it became acceptable to hate Nazis.

That's why the banality of evil concept is so important, because our instinctive aversion to Nazi imagery is the result of hindsight and constant reinforcement. We have no such association with the uniforms of new types of evil.

[Pat]

The attempt to reject the banality of evil comes from a desire to not view evil as a thing humans are all capable of, but instead demon spawn that can be killed without need of self reflection.

The easy lesson of the Holocaust is that Nazis are evil. The important lesson of the Holocaust is that we are all capable of becoming Nazis.

Robert Malone touched on this in his conversation with Joe Rogan. Mass Psychosis Formation is a real thing.

That said, while I suppose it is possible that we are "all" capable of becoming some variation on Nazis, I think it is important to understand the various factors that make one more or less prone to be come Nazi-like. I think a lot of it has to do with a propensity for groupthink and demonization of the other. But it also requires a context of propaganda-fueled fear and dissociation. 

And this is also why I'm not writing off the "Master Plan Hypothesis": the situation is too perfect for the ushering in of some kind of "new world order."

I think it's important to recognize the factors that make one less prone to become Nazi-like, because one thing that should be abundantly clear, both from recent memory and the atrocities of the last century, is that the vast majority of people fall into that category. We're eusocial animals, and the tendency to get along and go along are the fundamental characteristics exploited by totalitarianism. Rather, it's more important to recognize the traits that lead people to resist and push back against the groupthink and compliance, and even more importantly to recognize the means by which a small minority can sway the rest of the public. That's the missing piece, right now. There are people who are resisting the totalitarian demands, but the bulk of the public are just accepting the dictates and abuses, and a huge number are actively defending them. How do we shift that? The battle is between two minorities, and the battlefield is the rest of the body politic.

[Kiero]

Yes, exactly. THERE IS NO "CONSPIRACY". Neither the WEF nor the UN require the idea of some shadowy cabal of illuminati or reptilians or whatever behind it all. Just a gang of assholes with a very public agenda of control.

I've never used the word "conspiracy", didn't say it was one. Our former Health Secretary has been pictured several times with Gates and Schwab. He tweeted recently about how he was still in dialogue with Gates. It's all in plain site, yet we have people who immediately say you're engaging in delusional thinking to point out what is public knowledge if you but look.

You made the statement that most people acquiring Covid were catching it in hospitals. I asked you for a source. That's hardly a delusion you ignorant fuckwit.

I didn't say most, it's about a third. Another 20% or so get it in care homes. Those can be found without much effort, but fucked if I'm going to make any effort to assist you, cunt.

The easy lesson of the Holocaust is that Nazis are evil. The important lesson of the Holocaust is that we are all capable of becoming Nazis.

There's another lesson of the 20th century that the left is desperate to memory hole: the communists were every bit as evil as the Nazis. And they had longer to work.

[Ghostmaker]

As for your position, Pundit... You say that "the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away". I'm trying to clarify what you mean by that. For example, my sister is part of the unelected bureaucracy - she's a deputy director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think she knows that this is the goal? If you don't think that, then who in the organization would know that is the goal? Basically, how would one go about verifying this?

No offense to your sister who I am sure is a fine person indeed but the SEC could not even find Bernie Madoff and that is supposed to be their one job.

So what do you think?  Corrupt or Incompetent?  A little of column A and a little of column B?

As far as I can tell from conversations with her, the problem is that the SEC has very limited authority to investigate and prosecute. They are nothing like drug cops who can bust down doors and seize evidence.  It's difficult to prosecute big corporations for anything given their armies of lawyers, and the SEC is not an exception. My sister has been on the witness stand a handful of times at prosecutions, but at best the SEC seem to be a partial deterrent against the most blatant abuses, and prosecutions are rare.

Basically, it's not that the SEC is failing to enforce the law -- it's that the laws themselves favor those with expensive lawyers, and that is because the laws tend to be written by corporations, or at least with corporate consultants.

I know partly because she worked on the other side of the law previously, as a consultant for Deloitte where she was hired often to get around the law as much as possible.

You, and her, would be wrong.

Look up Harry Markopolos. When someone pointed him at Madoff, it took him five minutes to figure out something was wrong. It took another four hours to determine HOW it worked.

The reason the SEC doesn't work is that it isn't staffed with accountants -- it's staffed with lawyers. And all they know how to do is check and make sure the right forms have been filed.

There's a certain amount of regulatory capture there, but the hard fact is that the SEC exists to be used as a club against people who don't pay the danegeld to the feds.

[jhkim]

As far as I can tell from conversations with her, the problem is that the SEC has very limited authority to investigate and prosecute. They are nothing like drug cops who can bust down doors and seize evidence.  It's difficult to prosecute big corporations for anything given their armies of lawyers, and the SEC is not an exception. My sister has been on the witness stand a handful of times at prosecutions, but at best the SEC seem to be a partial deterrent against the most blatant abuses, and prosecutions are rare.

Basically, it's not that the SEC is failing to enforce the law -- it's that the laws themselves favor those with expensive lawyers, and that is because the laws tend to be written by corporations, or at least with corporate consultants.

I know partly because she worked on the other side of the law previously, as a consultant for Deloitte where she was hired often to get around the law as much as possible.

You, and her, would be wrong.

Look up Harry Markopolos. When someone pointed him at Madoff, it took him five minutes to figure out something was wrong. It took another four hours to determine HOW it worked.

The reason the SEC doesn't work is that it isn't staffed with accountants -- it's staffed with lawyers. And all they know how to do is check and make sure the right forms have been filed.

There's a certain amount of regulatory capture there, but the hard fact is that the SEC exists to be used as a club against people who don't pay the danegeld to the feds.

I'm not even arguing the effectiveness of the SEC. The question  is -- what would make it more effective? You're implying that it's simple and easy. All the government has to do is replace lawyers with accountants. Similarly, others like theRPGPundit say that the issue is the SEC personnel -- that if only there were different people working there, under the same laws, then Marvel Comics would start producing better comics and probably a ton of other better outcomes.

I think that you could replace all of the personnel in the SEC from top to bottom with different people hand-picked by whoever -- and it would not make the agency significantly more effective (and quite possibly less effective). It certainly would do nothing for the quality of Marvel Comics.


Getting regulation to work is a difficult job -- but the alternative of letting corporations do whatever they want without regulation isn't better, in my opinion. I think the best cases of regulation have been when the public became sufficiently aware and mobilized to make a difference. This happened to pass the Clean Air Act, for example, and I think that the improvement of air quality and the phase-out of leaded gasoline was a massive improvement. I also think that there was a crackdown on drug manufacturers after the scandal of Thalidomide to ensure safety testing of drugs -- and we're due for another crackdown with the opioid crisis.

[Pat]

I'm not even arguing the effectiveness of the SEC. The question  is -- what would make it more effective? You're implying that it's simple and easy. All the government has to do is replace lawyers with accountants. Similarly, others like theRPGPundit say that the issue is the SEC personnel -- that if only there were different people working there, under the same laws, then Marvel Comics would start producing better comics and probably a ton of other better outcomes.

I think that you could replace all of the personnel in the SEC from top to bottom with different people hand-picked by whoever -- and it would not make the agency significantly more effective (and quite possibly less effective). It certainly would do nothing for the quality of Marvel Comics.


Getting regulation to work is a difficult job -- but the alternative of letting corporations do whatever they want without regulation isn't better, in my opinion. I think the best cases of regulation have been when the public became sufficiently aware and mobilized to make a difference. This happened to pass the Clean Air Act, for example, and I think that the improvement of air quality and the phase-out of leaded gasoline was a massive improvement. I also think that there was a crackdown on drug manufacturers after the scandal of Thalidomide to ensure safety testing of drugs -- and we're due for another crackdown with the opioid crisis.

That's a perfect example of a strawman. "Someone criticized corruption! I'm going to pretend they said rid of all regulations! That'll make them look stupid!"

That's typical John Kim -- framing things in the most deceptive and dishonest way possible.

The public provides almost no check on the apparatus of bureaucracy, and crises make for terrible legislation. Those are garbage solutions.

The solution is strong and simple but clear rules. Remove bureaucratic and judicial discretion. The ability to decide when there's ambiguity is where corruption grows. The rules don't even have to be particular fair, just clear, because clear is ultimately fairer than arbitrary whim or preferential/adverse treatment. If you know what the rules are, you can make rational decisions and avoid breaking them, even if the rules are stupid.

The worst system is the one we have, where regulators, bureaucrats, legislators and judges have wide discretionary power, vast immunities, and have created and operate under an impenetrable and contradictory fog of rules, which give them great power over the lives and businesses they control, no fear of censure, and everybody they rule over knows they can be punished at any time because there's no way to avoid breaking a dozen rules before breakfast.

The ComputerBureaucracy Is not Your Friend.

[oggsmash]

  Nazis can be created because LOTS of people NEED rules and LOVE daddy to tell them what to do.  At some point people simply excuse themselves from being the driver and just go along for the ride.  I do not know if everyone is capable of going down that road, but I am certain enough are capable that they will remove those unwilling/incapable of going down the same road with them at the earliest opportunity.   

   I have seen more mindless following of arbitrary rules the past two years than I would have ever thought possible in this country.  I do not think that bodes well for the future.  I see a good deal of very low grade organizing to resist some of those rules...I think that is not a great sign either, at some point once people decide they can not tolerate one another any more, some one has to go. 

[Kiero]

The Nazis are the wrong example, they were only active for a few years.

Communists oppressed people for decades, they are the past masters of forced compliance. Read Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago for a primer on what the commies in authority are doing. It starts with little humiliations, repeated often enough for you to doubt your own conscience and volition. In service to a Big Lie which props up the regime.