Essays in Idleness

I do not suppose it makes any practical difference what I have to say about a public health problem that invades the lives of billions; nor that readers will take me for a reliable epidemiologist when I say that the worst danger of that Batflu has now passed. (Infection rates spike, but the power of the virus to torture and kill has relented. The death rates continue downward.)

Nevertheless, I think there is some value in stating, even restating, the obvious — when what is obvious is in conflict with sensational reports, and the aggressive distortions of mass media, profiting from panic.

This Batflu became — more than any previous epidemic — a political issue, instantaneously. This is evident in the way it was spread, quite intentionally, by the Communist Party of China. (They shut down everything in Wuhan, except flights to Europe and America.) In all countries with democratic institutions, the disease became the centre of political attention, and unprecedented lockdowns were ordered. Likewise, unprecedented schemes of surveillance have significantly changed the relation between governments and governed, entirely for the worse. By means of current technology, the former will be able to perpetuate these changes, leaving those who wish to recover old liberties nowhere to hide.

Moreover, this is done with public support. “The peeple” are easy to manipulate, once they have been frightened. The great majority of men, now and through the past, never cared about freedom. It has always been a minority concern, “for the intellectuals.” The “silent majority” will take their freedom, but only after their comfort and safety have been assured. The right to choose among consumer products is enough for them.

There are revolutions, such as the “cultural revolution” that is now being attempted by the Left, but these never last. Either they are extinguished, under the wet blanket of public apathy, where law and order are able to prevail, or the revolutionists succeed in installing a truly monstrous regime. Only thus, can they prolong their evil. Two generations of the Left-indoctrinated — half-educated university grads and students — favour a doctrinal dictatorship. Their powers grow as they age. Those still young are full of malign energy.

The riots that have been engendered in cities around the world, are a natural consequence of the lockdowns. The anger and suffering directly caused by them, even more than by the Batflu, have been exploited, almost brilliantly, by the force now organized by the platitude, “Black Lives Matter.” This was the “sales pitch” that animated huge numbers of coddled children to revolt, in the globe’s least racist societies — including those who haven’t even demonstrated, yet. They are prepared to believe things that are ridiculous, and they demand radical action on a massive scale.

None of this has anything to do with “Trump,” or any other demonized politician “of the right,” with dreams of restoring the status quo ante. By an agreement among the media and progressive elites, any appeal to “mom and apple pie” is now condemned as dark, very dark. Such appeals are only heard in the boondocks, by the hicks who do the “essential labour,” while being actively disenfranchised, by the fundamentally inessential who “work from home.”

Our whole world is now demographically urban. Not small cities, limited by their finite hinterlands, as of old, but vast inescapable world-trading conurbations. Those dwelling within are artificially isolated from the facts of nature, and from the fact of nature’s God. They become confused even about their own comfort and safety, and eagerly appease disruptive agents. The politicians use their tax money to buy radicals off.

I do not think any of these background conditions will change, short of disaster. And I do not think disaster is something to hope for. Rather, the very scale of our “problem” is, paradoxically, the best reason to hope — that we might retrieve such truth and justice as this world can afford.

For in the last analysis, we can turn to God. Our “problem” is very clearly “in his court,” and the God that we have worshipped through the centuries is not complacent. As Christians know, He showed this by His judicially murdered Son. Our light still shines in His Resurrection.