Sunday, August 09, 2020

conspiracy theories? Uh, read history

I had a bit of a rant yesterday about the culture of globalization that bases it's ideas on the enlightenment that inspires the international elites who are trying to make the world better,  by reforming the economy so that all those living had a good life.

the problem? the details of what is being planned.

in the past, it was openly genocidal (i.e. making colonies that put the conquering country's interests over those of the locals, or reforms to make things better for locals that killed a lot of innocent folks who got in the way because hey you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, as the saying goes)... and alas that is why these deliberate policies originally meant to make things better often led to horrors.

this idea goes back to Malthus of course: Don't feed the poor because it only encourages them to have more kids, a bloody philosophy which encouraged too many movers and shakers who at heart were probably good and honest men to support policies not to feed the Irish during the potato famine

or sometimes it was a geopolitical decision, such as the one that led to the artificial famine of India during World War II (Churchill thought it was worth it for the war effort, but India is now saying: wait a second it was us that you let die).


I won't even go into the artificial famines of the Holdomor or of Mao's "Great Leap forward", or more recently, the millions of civilians who died in various wars or famines in Africa, or even of the famine of North Korea in the 1990s that no one has seemed to notice.


Although disease, epidemics and famines have killed periodically throughout history, in modern times, the famines, genocides and refugees forced to flee their homes by wars or decisions made in the offices of those trying to remake the world are usually left out of history books, forgotten except for those whose ancestors survived.

Heck, closer to home who remembers the Philippine American war back in 1900, when probably 200 thousand civilians died, not of atrocities but by displacement of families from their farms, resulting in malnutrition related deaths and epidemics,  or that Mark Twain was one of the few who opposed it?

Well, anyway, one need not to be a conspiracy theorist to notice such things: RJ Rummel's site at the Univ of Hawaii has all those disturbing statistics for you to peruse, about death by government.

one of the books that describes a history of political manipulations by those who wanted to make a better worldt (/s) is of course the classic book Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University. If you can't get thru the book, John Lothe is gradually reading it to youtube so you can listen to it in your car while driving to work, or at night (I use this and similar books to put me to sleep. /sarcasm).



Sigh. Not much I can do about all of this of course.

But the idea that elites could decide who to live and who should die (or ignore when their policies cause folks to die) isn't limited to the geopolitical sphere. 

It's now the scientists doing their thing by remaking man, and the bioethicists doing their thing by instructing you why it's okay to get rid of your burden, be it an unexpected pregnancy or (nowadays this is big) persuading Grandmom she needs to off herself so you don't have to care for her. (and caring for her costs too much).

all done in a way that no one is to blame, of course.

is this why we see policies to send the Covid positive recovering patients to nursing homes, where the huge majority of covid deaths have occurred?

Actually, this murderous policy was more because of a bureaucratic mindset made regulations more important than reality:  because hey, the regulations say it's okay: all you need is well trained staff who have plenty of time to care for patients and enough PPE to stop the spread...just ignore reality that nursing homes often are staffed by semi trained and overworked caregivers, who lacked PPE equipment.

So blame the stupidity of bureaucrats, not malice, for a lot of the covid deaths. Or maybe not: notice the Pennsylvania doc behind this policy took her mom out of the nursing home and put her into a hotel? Ya think he didn't notice that it was dangerous?

well, anyway, what got me started on the rant was a podcast of John Bachelor discussing a new book on Eugenics in the USA: 

pushed as quite the thing way 100 years ago before the reality of Hitler actually implementing the policy showed how far that mindset could go.


Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.”... 
Buck v. Bell unfolded against the backdrop of a nation in the thrall of eugenics, which many Americans thought would uplift the human race. Congress embraced this fervor, enacting the first laws designed to prevent immigration by Italians, Jews, and other groups charged with being genetically inferior...
......






Eugenics, under a different name, is now rearing it's ugly head, and not just America LINK LINK

you ain't seen nothing yet.



and who actually is opposing these ideas in the modern world?

before Pope Francis decided to destroy the church by embracing trendy ecology over ethics, the Catholic church was led by John Paul II. He saw all of this coming, and issued a pointed warning to anyone who bothered to notice (and few did, alas). Quote:


This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable 'culture of death.' This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency.
 italics mine. 

ah yes: Efficiency is the goal, not compassion.

as in QALY (Ann Altnouse discusses, and her first comment says wryly: Death panels).


Again nothing new here: go back to Plato, who criticized doctors who helped cripples to live.

this is all trendy, of course: and the opposition is mute because the moral leaders are asleep at the wheel, or maybe too busy fighting the trendy chimera of global warming etc. to notice.

But 50 million caregivers in the USA and millions more all over the world might have a different opinion: 

Authors Pearl Buck wrote this about her daughter, mentally handicapped from PKU: 



My child’s life has not been meaningless... without her I would not have had the means of learning how to accept the inevitable sorrow, and how to make that acceptance useful to others.
Would I be so heartless as to say that it has been worthwhile for my child to be born retarded? Certainly not, but I am saying that even though gravely retarded it has been worthwhile for her to have lived.
It can be summed up, perhaps, by saying that in this world, where cruelty prevails in so many aspects of our life I would not add the weight of choice to kill rather than to let live.
A retarded child, a handicapped person, brings its own gift to life, even to the life of normal human beings. That gift is comprehended in the lessons of patience, understanding, and mercy, lessons which we all need to receive and to practice with one another, whatever we are.
For this gift bestowed upon me by a helpless child, I give my thanks.

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