19 Comments
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Tangent regarding the role of politicians and media in this:

Politicians not knowing medical science, even on the level of basic hygiene or how diseases are transmitted - high school level of knowledge really - I can to some extent understand and accept; they are rarely professional anything but politicians (at least here), and are as such reliant on "experts" while at the same time needing to be both suspicious of said experts and appearing as in control to us the great unwashed. The public may be exploited by competition using media, and experts may well be paid lobbyists with diplomas after all.

But how the media in Germany and Austria cannot recognise what they are doing - seemingly in their own accord to boot! - given the historical precedence not only of publications such as Der Stürmer, but of the earlier era: Austria-Hungary was as I understand it not exactly a bastion of "free press", was it?

Compare with Norway, where Russia Today and other russian media will not be censored. I believe Norway may be the one single western nation not censoring russian media - and Norway is both a NATO member and borders Russia, as well as it has some minor disputes regarding exploitation of the Arctic (as has Denmark and Greenland for that matter).

While Sweden, where pre-publication censorship is explicitly forbidden and outlawed by the constitution is now openly flaunted by the minister in charge. And the only papers challenging this are ones with a circulation of less than 50 000 readers taken all together - while state media supports censorship and is calling for the appointment of "temporary" official factcheckers.

Censors, in the original meaning of the word. How can they not recognise what they are doing? Values and principles are after all not the product of education, but of culture and character.

Expand full comment
author

Sadly, I agree with everything you say.

My wife and I often talk about these things over dinner, thereby 'spoiling' our kids, I suppose (imagine me trying to explain to our 8yo that there's more to the Ukraine-Russia situation than we're told by state media and her teachers…I do think I'm coming through with my arguments).

The outcome of our dinner conversations, though, is typically that my wife says that I'm quite certainly correct in my reading of the BS-peddling--but it won't matter: incompetence and politicians' lust for power and money trumps everything so far.

Most politicians aren't leaders, they're puppets. As Leonard Cohen (imho beautifully) sang, 'everybody knows', so I don't think these puppets much care, for a weird kind of self-preservation trumps humanitarian and other considerations.

As to the puppet masters, well, there isn't one Mr. Blofeld-like character (although I think Bill Gates fits that image quite well), there are many: the weapons producers, the financial elites, the 'national security' and Transatlaticists of all stripes, and the like, thus the puppets tilt into one 'direction' on Monday, which is contadicted by the next 'direction' on Tuesday, etc. This is, perhaps, why these puppets appear so hapless and incompetent--with the flip side, of course, being that many in Westerners grudgingly admire 'makers' who appear more firmly in charge, such as Mr. Putin and Chairman Xi, who are doing a much better job of subordinating these many 'interests' to the one, overarching national interest.

In other words: the West is firmly in post-national political waters while both Russia and China are (still) in political places. While there are minimal socio-economic and ideological differences between 'Oceania' (the West), 'Eurasia' (Russia), and 'East-Asia' (China), this cognitive discrepancy might explain, at least in part, the hatred spewed by Western politicoes and their camp followers.

Expand full comment
Mar 19, 2022·edited Mar 19, 2022

And we both know that when a group of people tell eachother how unique, independent and free-thinking they all are, they are anything but.

That scene from 'Life of Brian' when Brian calls out to the crowds: "You are all individuals!" and the crowds respond with "Yes! We are all individuals!" (except for the one guy going "I'm not!" and getting mobbed), and then "You must all think for yourselves!" - "Yes! We must al think for ourselves!"...

You know, it is a delicious irony that that particular movie was initially and for several years banned in Norway for violating their laws on blasphemy - and now? Now Norway holds free speech in such high regard as to put the rest of us to shame.

I recognise the type of dinner conversation you talk about. When my son was still in school, I of course helped him with homework but also with the "bring a question/topic to school"-style assignements. His teachers called several times asking us to stop, seeing as the questions "fell outside the approved remit of the curricula".

Cue me going full tilt Hektoring lecturer: "If you teach social science to middle school pupils and can't answer a question pertaining to the difference between proportionate distribution of mandates and first-past-the-post-principle, you should resign or take a remediary course on your subject!"

You see, the typical teacher in Sweden knows what's in the course books for the pupils, and that's it. The day is long gone when becoming a teacher required top grades (I squeaked in with a score of 19.7 out of 20), you studied your subject at university as any other student, and you had to pass the exams and so on. F.e. to teach english as a second language required four full time semesters at university.

For the past twenty years or so, give or take since we've had reforms every other year it sometimes feel like, they have been trained solely at teacher's college and the standards there are frankly appalling. It is about the same level we had in elementary school when I was 14.

It is very hard not to suspect something nefarious about the dismantling of education going on.

Expand full comment

Great stuff, Epimetheus!

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I just has another clash with my best friend (tripple vaxxed) who is convinced that the evil, evil unvaxxed are infecting everybody at the moment. 🙄🙄🙄 Hysteria is definitely on the rise in good ol‘ Vienna (I am not sure if the rest of Austria is also that hysterical anymore). It‘s waaaaay crazier than 2 years ago.

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Is Vienna less dependent on tourists than the rest of Austria?

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

It seems to be like this 🤷🏻‍♀️. The Mayor doesn’t seem to care about the economy but only about his personal health and ego and hate.

Expand full comment
author

Sigh, so true.

Also, the mayor's (nominal) party chief, a trained physician much like Germany's Mr. Lauterbach (i.e., very limited clinical experience and certainly nothing in terms of treating Covid-19), went on national TV a few weeks ago and claimed that it 'would take some six months before the vaccines develop their full protective effect'.

I doubt any additional comment on this one is required at this point.

Sigh.

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Unrequired additional comment: so this physician has not partaken of the swedish and danish studies finding that after six months, protection is nominal to nil, possibly negative?

Expand full comment
author

I suppose that your guess is as good as mine on this one. It might very well be that he or she has seen it but elected to ignore it (or was 'told' t do so).

It's also possible that Ms. Rendi-Wagner (that is her name), the current SP chairwoman, simply uses this outright false statement to try to score easy political points, isn't it? Or would such a consideration be 'outlandish'?

Be that as it may, I suppose we're firmly in political Pippi Longstocking territory here (with due apologies to Ms. Lindgren), as in: you just make up stuff as you prefer, which is possibly the ultimate consequence of identity politics and wokery. If it's o.k. to make up one's sex based on feelings and get 'offended' by, say, Shakespeare or Orwell, I mean, how could one not get offended by reality, if said reality contradicts one's own sets of believes and feelings (which must take the front seat, facts be damned).

Expand full comment
author

Well, I doubt that, but I think that there's quite a correlation between injection status and being on the upper rungs of the income distribution, hence any triple-injected tourist might actually like to hang out in Vienna without all the 'unclean' hoi polloi, but I'm not sure that this isn't something the PR people have been working on for some time now…

Expand full comment
author

Hi Yakari, good to see you (again).

What did your (former?) best friend say, if I may ask?

Also: is he or she looking forward to the 4th injection?

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Hi epimetheus, I have been practicing digital and news detox for some weeks but today I had the urge to read some substack blogs. ☺️

He is still my friend but I am not sure if he is my best friend. He was complaining about the asocial people who don’t test themselves for events regularly, especially the unvaxxed, as they spread the infection. He went to an event last weekend and his partner and others were tested positive after the event and he is sure that that’s the unvaxxed untested persons‘ fault. There are still too many unvaxxed people in Austria….

He is looking forward to a yearly injection….

Expand full comment
author

Welcome back, and thanks for chosing this 'stack, among others.

As to your friend, I'm really sorry to read this, in particular as the main problem with his 'logic' is this: there were close to 6.5m people in Austria who got the first injection, but there's more than 2m less who went on to get a second and third injection.--This means, first and foremost, that there are now more 'insufficiently injected' individuals (more than 2m) compared to those 'eligible but who refuse any injection'.

I doubt that any such 'nuance' might have an impact on your friend, though (hasn't had on mine, but who knows…), but then again, it would appear that esp. the triple-jabbed have taken leave of their senses a while ago.

Expand full comment
Mar 18, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I totally agree with your last sentence. Before the first jab he didn’t want to get vaxxed but had to due to work. Directly after the second he had the feeling that he would die as he experienced heart problems. Shortly before the third he told me that he was looking forward to it as he had read that the jab was 98 % efficient for Omikron and now he seems to hate everybody who is not sufficiently immunized. Before the first jab he was not even afraid of the virus….

Expand full comment
author

Perhaps the combination of Sars-Cov-2 and the injections (whatever is actually in them) works as a powerful narcotic?

I could vey well imagine that getting the injections induces an all-powerful sentiment of this 'talisman' (in an anthropological sense) offering 'protection' as long as one believes this to be the case?

At least one ethnographer-anthropologist I know mentioned this kind of 'fetishism' as a clearly visibly analogue.

Expand full comment
Mar 19, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Hm, I guess for some people the injections really works as some kind of talisman. My friend seems to be one of him as he is totally proud that he has not catched Covid yet. "So, unholy unvaxxed stupid friend, see? The jab works perfectly fine. At least for me. And that's what counts. I don't care about other people."

Expand full comment