The bigger game is this:
All the powerful people -- the think tanks, the titans of industry, the heads of the media conglomerates, the owners of the banks -- are deep in Bernaysian crowd psychology.
It's been their go-to tool for social control for the past 100 years.
The masses of the left and right had become increasingly fractious, and increasingly targeted the elite (media heads, government officials, big banks, corporate executives, think tank analysts), whom they are not 'supposed' to target, instead of each other.
You still have the die-hard 'capitalism or bust!' folks on the right who think anything a bank or corporation wants to do is within its right. And you still have the die-hard 'justice or make 'em hang!' folks on the left who view average people who don't agree with them as the primary obstacle to social change.
However, increasingly, people on the left were targeting the big corporations and government officials, no longer contented by displays of unity (rainbow flags, black power fists, kneeling, pretty words), and instead demanding REAL change: fire everyone who's the wrong color, sex, or orientation and replace him with a diversity hire at every level of the corporation; defund the police; free everything for everybody paid for by the government; etc. They were becoming increasingly immune to mere words/symbols and wanting big, bold, paradigm-shifting ACTION.
Meanwhile, people on the right were also targeting the elites, boycotting major corporations, which they saw as abandoning them, abandoning the political process (and when the people lose faith in the government, TRULY lose faith in it, you are not far from people refusing to pay taxes, then not long after that outright revolution), targeting government officials, corporate CEOs, and Wall Street in their "drain the swamp" talk, and so on. At the same time they were pushing aside as dinosaurs those old school conservatives who thought you should never criticize corporations, banks, or the rich. Again, these people were sick of inaction, and too wanted big, bold, paradigm-shifting action.
So you've got a situation where these two sides of the masses are supposed to be squabbling with each other, so both are off the elites' backs.
However, both sides had started wising up and were increasingly turning their attentions to the elites, and changing the paradigm, rather than each other, and being contented with words and symbolic displays that changed nothing.
The elites don't want to shift the paradigm though. Words and symbols are fine, because they don't change anything. But they are elites under the current paradigm. If you change the paradigm, there is no guarantee they will still be 'elites' in the new one -- in fact, very often elites end up on the guillotine when the paradigm shifts.
Then, presto! Coronavirus!
Suddenly, marching orders are coming down from the elite, and the left is snapping them right up and being good little soldiers, wearing their masks, staying indoors, doing their distancing, getting their shots, everything the news media tells them to do, and being PROUD to do it, gosh darn it!
Meanwhile, the right is petulantly shaking its head, saying that no siree! We're not wearing those masks, we're not staying indoors, we're not doing that distancing, we're not getting those shots -- not over our dead bodies! And they're proud of that defiance, too!
The left masses, following orders from the elites, fights with the right masses, and the right masses, pointing the finger at the elites but too busy defending against the left masses to really focus on the elites, fights back.
And you get this whole stupid mess where once again one chunk of the masses is fighting with the other chunk of the masses.
And during it all, the middle class lost $4 trillion, and the billionaire class gained $4 trillion, just in 2020 alone.
Does the vaccine actually do anything, either to protect you or to harm you?
I doubt it. Based on everything I have researched in both pro- and anti-vaccine information, all the claims of benefit and claims of harm are circumstantial and rely on heavy confirmation bias. People with the vaccine still get sick, go to the hospital, and get pneumonia at the same rates as people without it. However, despite the occasional side effect, for the most part they are not dying, being sterilized, paralyzed, or anything else either.
This vaccine in particular seems uniquely positioned to drive a wedge in society:
- Completely new, untested technology (mRNA) -- people on the left, who love new advances, will be thrilled; people on the right, who are skeptical of new advances, will be paranoid
- Skipping the normal testing process "because it's so urgently needed to save lives" -- people on the left, whose highest moral good is caring for others, will embrace this thinking; people on the right, who balance caring with other moral dimensions, such as personal autonomy and bodily integrity, are a lot less likely to
- Big government mandates that everyone get vaccinated "for safety" -- people on the left, who LOVE the unity of big government, are all aboard this train; people on the right, who HATE the coercion of big government, find the idea revolting
You can find a bunch of other ways this vaccine seems to be ideal as a sociopolitical wedge.
But it is really well designed to perfectly appeal to leftist morality ("I'm doing my part to save lives!"), with the result being the left has fallen back in line.
Notice who is giving all these orders to mask up, distance, and get vaccinated, by the way:
- Government officials
- Corporations
- Media personalities
It is all the SAME people the left was putting under a gigantic spotlight just two years ago and putting massive pressure on to get fully aboard the social justice train -- and not just words and symbols, they wanted
action...
massive action.
Now these people, whose throats they were at two years ago, are once again their noble leaders, commanders, heroes, and idols, championing the fight against a
deadly enemy, and leading them in sallies against the
oh-so-stupid people on the right who don't even realize how much danger they're putting themselves and others in by not doing what the elites tell them to.
It works as planned on the right, too. The level of extreme conspiracy theories I am hearing from my most right-leaning friends are as unhinged as the wild germaphobic terror I am hearing from my most left-leaning friends. The more general right-wing is in a continual state of paranoia about what is going on, and feels put-upon and hemmed in by the left/elite alliance. A cornered animal is not one capable of going on offense, and the right for now is effectively neutered.
Step into the shoes of a master of the universe though and think about his goals:
- I want to make money
- I want to collect power
- I want to keep what I've gotten
- I want to get more of what I've gotten
- The only thing that's going to stop me is these regular people aligning and becoming too fractious/rebellious
What's your objective?
It's not "poison everyone with a subtle toxin", because that'll lead to real revolution quicker than anything else (and no subtle toxin, no matter how well engineered, is capable of doing enough damage to neuter an entire population). It's also not "kill everyone who opposes me" because there's no way to do that without open war, and open war is neither feasible nor desirable (no elite wants to be "King of Nothing", which is what you'll be if your society is destroyed in a war). Nor is it "save everyone from a deadly disease" -- these same people have no problem starting wars for riches that lead to millions of deaths (both their countrymen and others') and the destruction of entire outside societies. And however deadly you think this virus is, the morgues aren't full and no one's stepping over bodies on the streets, including in the regions that have no virus measures whatsoever.
Instead, your objective as a very powerful individual is simple:
"Keep enough of society following our marching orders that we have a base of supporters; meanwhile, keep the masses busy enough fighting each other their attention stays off us."
That is what is going on. It is the same trick they have pulled over and over for the past 100 years.
Every time mass movements on the left and right become too radical, and begin targeting the elite too much instead of each other, there is some new sudden thing that happens that leads to one side (and sometimes it is the right, and other times it is the left) aligning itself with the elite, following its marching orders to the letter, and castigating the other side that doesn't.
Edward Bernays has won again.
So far as I can tell, he is going to keep winning long into the future.
Of course, sooner or later, all this chaos is going to damage these countries' economies enough that no amount of trickery will be able to pull the wool over the common people's eyes. But so long as people aren't starving to death or pushing around wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread, you aren't at that point yet, and you can still get people to believe whatever you want them to believe.
Just as a side note, what a sad time to live in, where everyone is beset with paranoia of one kind or another (whether fear of viral infection, or fear of government control). My advice to anyone who is sick of living in fear like this: find a way to build a life of heroic action for yourself, where you are constantly taking steps to perform deeds that are great or that lead you toward greatness, and shut out the paranoia of those timid souls too fearful to do anything other than cower in the dark, shuddering, waiting helplessly for the shadow of the predator they fear to fall upon them.
Chase
edit: I will add that this is why most political debates in a late-stage republic are dumb. At least in a monarchy you have one king and his supporters vs. a competing claimant to the throne and his supporters. In a late-stage republic you have a bunch of corrupt shadowy oligarchs and plutocrats hovering behind the scenes agitating the masses against each other to prolong their stay in power. All you're doing when you're arguing politics with Average Joes is wasting your breath being a grunt on the front lines for that.
