Well, that escalated quickly. The army are “assisting” with enforcing compliance of the increasingly authoritarian laws in Sydney.
In addition, helicopters are flying around western Sydney with sirens and loud hailers to “encourage” people to stay indoors and certainly not protest against these impositions.
The laws around this current lockdown have been strengthened and extended.
What type of laws? How about wearing a mask even when outdoors?
I’m sure there’s solid scientific evidence behind that massive dilution of civil liberties, it’s just not been presented yet. Erm….
We shouldn’t be surprised by this, though. After all, the precedent has been set for us as the UK and the USA went through this a year before Australia’s unofficial “zero covid” strategy fell apart in an embarrassing mess. Governments, local authorities and police forces the world over have shown exactly how little regard they have for individual rights.
Some of those rights we took for granted which we no longer enjoy include:
Freedom of speech – social media is removing and banning dissenting voices. Look at the history of the lab leak hypothesis and what happened to those who suggested it. That the censor isn’t a government makes no difference if they are achieving the same outcome.
Freedom of movement – in Sydney, you will be fined for leaving a 10km radius of your home.
Freedom of association – protesters in Sydney are being fined. Private citizens cannot visit each other’s homes.
Freedom to work and earn – tradesmen were banned from going to work last month, and any business relying on footfall or seasonal trade has already been destroyed.
And the process of removing these rights is being “assisted” by the army. That should surely ring a few alarm bells?
Perhaps then, the only question worth asking is, “Are you ok with this?”.
If your answer is “yes”, I have a supplemental question for you.
“What, then, would it take for you to become concerned?”
Bill’s Opinion
The framing of these changes is that they are “to keep us safe”. If one assumes good faith on behalf of the law givers, there’s a line of logic we can see behind some of the laws. The debate, which we’ve obviously lost, is whether the price is worth it.
Personally, I believe we are now paying far too high a price in terms of dangerous precedent for the safety we are benefiting from. That ship has sailed though.
However, it’s hard to accept a good faith argument with regards to some of these measures. Outdoor mask wearing, for example, appears to make no logical sense.
We know that. They know that. And they know we know that.
Yet, why then?
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
Theodore Dalrymple