we've reached the point where things are beginning to sound like satire from the 1960s.
I haven't reviewed Dr. Strangelove, or the film Failsafe, here yet. I'll have to get to that. Dr. Strangelove was a satirical version of the same work, both being based on the novel Failsafe. It's a tribute to Stanley Kubrick that the satirical version is remembered more than the straight drama.
For those who don't recall it or who haven't seen it, the plot is based on an Air Force general, Gen. Jack D. Ripper, going insane and launching the B-52s under his command on an unauthorized first strike, with nuclear weapons, on the USSR. Once the bombers have passed their "failsafe" point, where they cannot be recalled, he makes his plot known.
The Dr. Strangelove version involves some heavy satire of 1950s and 1960s Cold War conspiracy theories. These theories really existed at the time. One of them involved fluoridation of water, which some people really believed was a Communist plot, rather than a health move to strengthen teeth and reduce tooth decay, which was its real motives. The film is full of really hilarious lines that related to this, including:
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works
And;
Gen. Buck Turgidson: General Ripper called Strategic Air Command Headquarters shortly after he issued the go code. I have a phone transcript of that conversation if you'd like me to read it.
Preisdent Merking Muffley: Read it.
Turgidson: Ahem... The Duty Officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he had issued the go code, and he said, uh, "Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and nobody can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation." Uh... "My boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now." Uhuh. Uh... "So let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all." And he hung up.
Turgidson: Uh, we're... still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
Muffley: There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: We-he-ell, uh, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring!
Turgidson: Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.
Muffley: General Turgidson, I find this very difficult to understand. I was under the impression that I was the only one in authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.
Turgidson: That's right sir. You are the only person authorized to do so. And although I hate to judge before all the facts are in, it's beginning to look like General Ripper exceeded his authority.
Over the weekend, I read an op-ed by a candidate challenging Cheney for her seat, which contained the quote; "Biden’s vaccine mandate violates our constitutional rights to bodily integrity and to decline medical treatment."
Bodily integrity?
Now, I know what the candidate means. And I'll further note that the candidate represents Federal employees in regard to the vaccine mandate for Federal employees. What she means, essentially, is that requiring a person to get a vaccine amounts to something like a 4th Amendment violation to be secure in your person.
But it doesn't sound that way.
Part of the reason I fear that people won't put it that way, as they don't want to extend the rest of the argument, which is one of radical libertarianism which most people are pretty uncomfortable with. Indeed, I'm getting a little bit of a scent in the wind that this is really about to start drifting the other way.
Radical libertarianism holds that a person is free to do whatever they want with their bodies with no societal restraint. I.e, you can be a drug addict, drink yourself to death, whatever. Generally, the only limit is "as long as you don't hurt others".
Truly radical libertarianism doesn't have the latter aspect to it. I.e, in the anarchical form you can hurt others, they just have the right to hurt you back.
Most people aren't for that.
Of course, generally the argument isn't posed this way at all, but candidates are very careful, for the most part, not to take the other step lest they go down a road that is too Kubrikesque.
What the candidate didn't say, we'd note, is that the candidate feels the vaccines are dangerous, or alter people's DNA, or contain microchips, or anything of that sort. We know that they aren't any more dangerous than other vaccines, and we know that they don't alter your DNA in some scary chimera, and we know that they aren't part of a Bill Gates plot. I've heard all of those things said. The most outlandish one, I'll note, is the claim that everyone who receives the vaccine will be dead within one year, a frankly absurd assertion.
The candidate didn't say anything about the candidate being vaccinated, either.
The candidate doesn't want to be associated with anything like that, of course, while still wanting the votes of people who feel that the vaccines shouldn't be mandated for any number of reasons, ranging from strong 4th Amendment beliefs, to strong religious beliefs to having fallen down into the conspiracy theory hole.
Which is emblematic of the entire political season.
Right now a lot of Republicans are being very careful not to say that they support insurrection while also being very careful not to say that they are condemning what happened on January 6. They don't want to alienate the populists (whom ironically in many places include a large number of former blue collar Democrats). We saw this in the race in Virginia. The winning candidate walked a fine line between accepting Trump's endorsement and keeping him at more than arm's length.
The ultimate problem is how far you can go down that path before you've walked right into the conspiracy swamp without realizing it. Plenty of conservative Germans did that in the late 1920s and early 1930s, only to find that while they never held conspiratorial beliefs about Jews themselves, they had walked into a dictatorship that marched into a Second World War. While that sounds extreme, of course, it's clear by this point that Donald Trump began to work on a coup to retain power prior to the November election and he's working on fixing the 2024 election. The Republican Party hasn't won the popular vote for the Presidency in 22 years and now quite a few in the trenches are will to listen to theories that this is due to nefarious reasons, rather than it simply being due to the fact that, like it or not, the nation has evolved to the point where most of its citizens live in large cities.
All of which is a bit off point for where I was going.
I truly wonder if the candidate isn't vaccinated. I have no idea, but my guess is that the candidate, like most, but not all, in the candidate's profession, have been, particularly where the candidate's spouse is appreciably older than the candidate and therefore more at risk.
Which of course gets to the flipside of radical libertarianism, which is that governmental bodies can and always have required people to do stuff they don't want to for the public good. The question is where you draw that line.
Wherever its drawn, I suspect its being redrawn right now, and not where those up in arms in this are would have it. Wherever the Ritterhouse trail comes out, it's pretty clear that the nation is seriously reconsidering the libertarian expansion of firearms laws that has occurred over the past 20 years, and they're going to start retracting. If that's correct, and I suspect it is, there's going to be a subtle shift here too.
Picking up long-distance trends, even if they're four years out, is not easy to do, but it looks like the direction of the wind is in fact changing.
In the meantime, while I know its purely accidental, people ought to be careful about putting something into print that shows the same litigation driven instinct that caused us, when exercised on the left, to get to the anti-democratic point we're now at, and it'd be good to have these things proof read by somebody with a deep cultural knowledge. I'm sure I'm not the only one who recalled Jack D. Ripper when I read the op ed.
And really, it'd be better just to be flat out honest and plain. Whatever the reason for opposing the mandates is, just say it. If it's that you don't believe the disease is risky, say that. Or if you don't care if some die due to their decisions not to get vaccinated, say that. If death is the price you're willing to pay to draw a line on individual freedom, say that.
But whatever is said, surely this isn't what the GOP race next year is really about. And people ought to be really honest about that as well.
And they ought to be honest about their individual beliefs. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the two state Senators feel that Trump tried to stage a coup, that they'd support mandatory vaccinations in nearly any other context, and that they'd have voted for the infrastructure bill (which I wouldn't have) had it been offered by a Republican.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I suspect that's not true.
I think it's paved with personal compromises. Things we say but don't mean, mean but don't way, put up with when we disagree, and conduct we engage in as the world or others feel we should. Pretty soon, we're goo far in to muster up the energy to change our courses.
No comments:
Post a Comment