“We should be owned by now”

 The sad and disturbing case of the metropolitan elites

Back in the day, when the seemingly endless post world war economic growth had come to a screeching halt and unemployment benefits offered youths the chance to use their brains for independent thought, the metropolitan elites were quite sure that capitalism had run its course and should be replaced by a more inclusive system, a bit like communism as it existed in Eastern Europe but without all the mind-numbing and fruitless control mechanisms. Everybody poor and happy in a harmonious society which was developing only ever so slowly. Imagine, the metropolitan elites’ favourite car, the Deux Chevaux, would never go out of production! What joy! What insignificance! For a while, we seemed to be going in this direction and new metropolitan cohorts enthusiastically embraced the idea. No future! Poor and free they sailed through the nineteen eighties, denying that around them the capitalist engine was restarting under the impulse of neoliberalism and its absurd premise that greed and disregard could ever be the lubricants of human agreement. Then came the nineties. New money was pouring into the economy and everybody was invited to take their little part in the great global grab fest. The metropolitan elites, still convinced that one day the system would fail, found arty niches for themselves where they could pleasantly spend their days and make only just enough money to pleasantly survive. While financialised globalisation was taking the world in a wrong direction, at least it wasn’t their fault. They were in and doing fine, just not quite that radical anymore.

 

And so the decades came and went. Crises, too. Every ten years, it seems, something nasty is befalling humankind, something organised and executed from above, something that hurts. First, the monied interests and their minions pulverised some skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan and blamed it on their good friend Osama bin Laden, who was living in a cave in Afghanistan at the time. Then they crashed the stock market and ran off with the loot, leaving ordinary wage workers around the world to foot the bill. And finally, they gave us covid, the perfect excuse to lock us up and destroy the remains of our livelihoods. You would be forgiven to think these people really hate us for our freedoms. Yet, the metropolitan elite no longer felt aggrieved by what was going on in their world, since they mostly had managed to steer clear from the real pain, living in the West after all. They had gone making kids round the turn of the century – often with their best friend’s ex – and they felt their old perspective was not the ideal atmosphere to have a child grow up in. They used to have it nice and easy in their youth because their world was expanding and they wanted to give their offspring a mimicked version of that. So, they began thinking positively. They chose to want to understand how country management works, rather than criticise it. They became moderate, and middle class. They had nice incomes and nice apartments and they preferred to look the other way when disaster struck.

 

Apart from all the other havoc it is wreaking, covid is having a devastating impact on the intellectual capacities of the culturally advanced middle classes in our metropolitan centres. They have seen themselves forced to go along with a narrative spun by a government and some international voices that simply had to be true in the name of uninformed consent. Don’t worry, our leaders know what they are doing. Yeah, sure, I just would like to be informed a bit sooner, sometimes. Well, you can’t know everything, you know? Nevertheless, authorities clearly can. And so, it has become accepted wisdom that government is basically good and merely needs our full support to get us through this ordeal as quickly as possible. Whatever the rules in the country you happen to reside in – wear masks in the street, stay at home in the evening, have a stick shoved up your nose every now and then – they are necessary to conquer the invisible and so far unproven menace. The unwashed masses that somehow feel things are not quite right and start gathering in the streets to protest the ongoing bullying, well, they are just that, unwashed. They have most likely been led astray by attention seeking internet bloggers who think they know better when they clearly lack the information our leadership possesses. You don’t honestly think these people can be right, do you? And if you do, you obviously also believe the Earth is flat. Come to think of it, you’re a dangerous fool and I don’t want to know you any longer.

 

All it takes is a deep breath to forgive such harsh words. I know that you are scared. You’re often not that young anymore and you’ve had your fair share of substance abuse in the day and you’re not so sure you can still trust your body’s inherent strength. Yet that should not be an excuse to hide behind when you see the elderly suffocating on their religiously worn mouth masks, steadily filling their old lungs with a deadly mixture of bacteria and fear, being left alone all of a sudden at an age when they are needing our support ever more. Or when you hear how children are instilled with guilt for their grandparents’ survival chances, forced to be living already for a year – sheer forever when you’ve only recently joined the party! – behind masks and screens when they should be jumping about like the little lambs they are, meanwhile slowly losing their interest in life. What about small businesses suffering from arbitrary closures that one by one disappear? When so many are losing perspective, can you still be on the side-lines? Let’s be clear here, - with due sympathy to the poor souls who’ve lost their lives or their health – overall death numbers show covid was under control as of May last year and we could have gone for herd immunity and kill the motherfucker before it could further harm us, being summer and all and there being a window of opportunity to face winter with a more resistant population. The powers wouldn’t have it, of course not, as they were busy pushing their injection, and neither, unfortunately, would the metropolitan elites, afraid to put their savings on the line. Revolution will inevitably destroy small fortunes, ask the Russians, which is why your hypocrisy is understood and certainly not looked down on. It’s just that we’ve been suffering for a full year and nothing good has come of it, people still dying in larger numbers than they should. That’s from the measures, mind, and the absence of health care.

 

And now the metropolitan elites want to get the jab when they have nothing to fear personally. They even line up their bloody children! This, in my mind, is simply too much, this is sheer madness. It is abuse of one’s body without gain. I do not usually submit my mind to the Abrahamic god, but I do believe we ought to celebrate and nurse our mother, Earth, the life giver, and live in harmony with Her, and I don’t see where changing her design is going to contribute to this idea. Creating life is not a pissing contest. So, I cannot consent with any mad GMO experiment. It’s against my convictions. I probably should leave it here. I have a family to care for, I have my own reasons for hypocrisy. Still, it hurts to see life being destroyed for younger generations. I’m sure there will be space for most of them in the new society, if it were coming to pass, but they’re not going to have the fun we had and we’re not going to mimic the coming control state away. Yes, I know, they make it look cool, our cities are getting greener and cleaner and not having to travel is a great idea, but there won’t be room for all of us inside the new world’s walls, not by a long shot. I wrote a novel about this phase we’re heading into, some years ago, no virus in sight but with similar results. I invite you to read it. Write to coospalmboom@gmail.com

 

 

P.H.E.A.R., a future message

In his quest for underground realities, the subterranean traveller chanced upon an alternative reading of events that are currently harassing human brain functions and our belief in sanity as a mental concept. It was a glamorous story, a bit like a seventy’s social drama sci-fi movie, and it ventured into the future just that bit faster than officially ordained reality, so that by the time things were seriously going down the drain, as in now, the film version was more or less a decade ahead of perceived cutting-edge foreboding. The traveller loved it and decided to disseminate his feelings about other people’s bright ideas at that precise moment in time, the sensation being that his body was somehow worth it. So here is how stuff went down.

 

In the early 2020s, a terrible crisis befell planet Earth. People started dying by the thousands and millions, even billions. That’s why we are living under Machine Assured Realtime Safety (an Elon Musk initiative) today, because of what happened then. It all started with a huge mistake, something which became later known as the COllective Viral Infection Delusion. People all over the rich world were freaking out over a virus their media told them was all around and extremely lethal. Frightened and obedient they accepted every rule foisted upon them. Anything better than having to think and take a stand, as thinking quickly had become quite dangerous. It could easily cost you your job and your family, just for being a fool with an opinion. People, as it turned out, were too Wilfully Obscuring Knowledge Examples to handle reality. They had their favoured dreams to live by and they weren’t going to trade them for facts or figures.

 

Mistakes are not usually made without a trigger, and here it was a declaration from the World Transformation Forum, a wealthy debating society of self-declared societal transformers with a surprising hold over the minds of most politicians which quite suddenly, in late January, issued a stark warning. Soon, the message read, hospitals around the world would stop functioning as usual because of a Public Healthcare Event with Astonishing Results, an acronym that read like a rapper with a scary name and which quite rightly was understood by the general public as a ban on demanding and receiving ordinary medical assistance. At first, this seemed just a minor nuisance to the majority of the public who were not in need of regular care, although of course for the old and infirm it meant a severe strain on their survival chances, but then a rumour started spreading on social media: smack in the middle of the healthcare event a new and as yet poorly understood virus was making the rounds and presumably killing people by the thousands. Within days, television and politicians took on the story and the COllective Viral Infection Delusion was born. We were all chased by an invisible enemy right at a time when hospitals were off-limits. Where could we hide? Luckily, our brave politicians soon found the answer: go home and lock the door, do not go to work or school or gym or bar, avoid contact with family, friends and strangers alike, and if one really had to go out, to go shopping for food, wear a diaper over one’s face to prevent the invisible fiend from entering your body, where it may do unspeakable harm. Religiously, the people followed up these proposals – and those who wouldn’t were heftily fined – with predictable results. Whole sectors of the economy, the arts, entertainment, tourism and local business, disappeared, while people’s health was quickly deteriorating through a combination of isolation, fear, excessive alcohol consumption and continuous diaper wearing. Come the next winter, many people died from being unprepared for colder weather, with the blame of course put on the unseen enemy instead of the COllective Viral Infection Delusion. In a desperate attempt at stopping the onslaught, untested vaccines were rolled out, but as no one knew what virus to beat, the inoculations were both useless and dangerous, killing even more people, which were again blamed on the invisible one.

 

And so it went, season after season. First, the octogenarians died in large numbers, then they were the over seventy, then the over sixty as well as many disabled and other people dependent on state allowances. Meanwhile, unemployment soared and once thriving neighbourhoods made Eastern-Europe in the 1980s look prosperous. Our brave politicians were seen on television crying hot tears over the terrible ordeals they were forced to put us through. Think of the children, one stammered between sobs and wails, their childhoods are destroyed and their futures are taken away from them. When they grow up, many will end up in a life of crime and drug abuse, and all of that because of this horrible invisible danger we must fight all together. Inevitably, some people lost their appetite for the unstoppable descent into hell and with that their belief in the existence of the feared disease. It’s all a delusion, they cried, we just need to resume our old ways and all will be fine. Luckily, the police were able to teach such foolhardy snobs a good lesson, and those who still believed could feel assured the strong arm was fully on their side.

 

Nevertheless, such episodes made it clear to the WTF that the COVID cycle was coming to its conclusion and that new scares were needed if they wanted to keep PHEAR alive. By now, few people still were in contact with their general practitioner, with many dying at home from once curable cancers, heart conditions and infections of all kind. A clever moniker should be able to join such wildly diverging health problems and focus the public’s attention again on the necessary destruction of everything they once held dear. Where previously the blame was put on an invisible enemy, this time it was the most visible of all, the one in the mirror, your one and only you, the person you perhaps held dearest of all. And it went like this.

 

They said you were a danger. It wasn’t the virus, after all, which had been an illusion all along (we are now able to confirm), it was the person. And some persons were more dangerous than others. They were considered a Transmitting Human Emergency Menace. This indisputable fact made clear that undesirable types were not going to be rescued. It was the ultimate guilt trip many had been waiting and sometimes even longing for. Just to not be one of them! The false escape from fear such thinking offered, drove many people insane. They were on a high they knew was sustained by nothing but temporary lies. So, they became unreasonable. It was not nice.

 

With the West sinking into despair, countries in the Southern hemisphere started wondering why they were taken for a ride. One by one, their peoples rose up against the needless and very harmful measures in the name of COVID, with their governments often too weak to resist popular revolt. It happened just before the internet turned 100% nationally oriented (something I predicted in my novel Jungle Town would happen), and the story spread so fast it became hard to know where it had actually originated, though most accounts spoke of an African beginning. Initially, the Western sheeple ignored the ongoing liberation of large swaths of the planet (the few reports leaking through were considered fake news), but lately more and more individuals have been waking up to what has been going on right under their noses. Perhaps, they will recognise their Southern brethren’s collective power and finally (after hundreds of years) decide to grant them the initiative, with Astonishing Results.

 

 

Strawberry Fears Forever

Music to go: strawberry fields

 

Nothing’s real anymore, have you noticed? Life is merely a mirror image of what we held for true until very recently. Social relationships, especially the looser ones, have suffered greatly from people not daring to approach. Tucked behind our masks, all we can give each other is the eye, a fearful, hungry, obedient eye with only a touch of anger mixed in. It’s not enough to make things happen. Neither do we want anything to happen. When things are getting worse, let tomorrow be today. We are going through the motions. We are living in a dream, all of us. With society breaking down under isolation and poverty, we are quickly losing our culture. There are lots of incomprehensible and repulsive laws and regulations imposed everywhere, but what really strikes is that the rule of life has gone. There’s no logic to our existence any longer, no adherence to a guiding principle, be it politics, religion or selfishness, other than fear - fear of disease or fear of repression. We are lost in our private interpretations, deprived of bars and shops and busy streets to monitor our sanity. What we’re left with is an exercise in self-assessment. Howdy, mirror image, do I still look sane? Can I still pretend? ‘Cause that’s what it is about, this so-called new normal. Let’s imagine everything is like it always was, even though nothing is. And see if we can maintain our mental well-being in the face of total madness. Jay Krishnamurti said: it’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Yet, we see people everywhere do whatever they can to adapt. Look at me, I can wear a mask, I can stay away from you, I can shame myself, I can even hate myself. How am I doing, overlord?

 

Following the leader in the face of a great, unknown fear hasn’t turned out to be a very wise tactic, has it? Ten months in and counting, we haven’t got any closer to the end of our ordeal. Rather, people are being told to get used to permanent lockdowns. By the way, the vaccine is not going to save us, the virus has been mutating a lot lately and we can’t guarantee it will be of any use. But take it anyway, you know, it’s new and it’s been paid for. By you. So shut up and lock up and stay put till we tell you to come out again. Don’t blame or sue us for any damages your inactivity may have incurred, we all accept these measures are necessary. Wouldn’t want anybody to die this year, would we? Not in the news, that is. Not from fabled covid, the grand executioner. The silent killer of alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, depression, auto mutilation and suicide is not taken into account. Who cares about losers who can’t cope? The new normal is here for the successfully desensitised.

 

Pardon my sarcasm, I do understand why people want to follow the official explanation. There are so many stories these days and so many of them are challenged, it’s very difficult to come to some sort of understanding of what’s going on in the world. Besides, we have been conditioned into trusting authority. For thousands of years we used to place our fate in the hands of Gods, and when we had enough of their dictatorial ways there were peers and icons to look up to. Yet, many of us were groomed in a society that had managed to secure certain freedoms for the individual, the most important being the right to be who you were and put faith in your own decisions. Don’t follow leaders, Bob Dylan warned around the time it was becoming clear in certain circles that progress and prosperity could not be shared by everybody on the planet, as our poor mother seemed incapable of carrying such a heavy load, and ideas for serious population reduction began floating. Think for yourself, the reasoning went, make up your own mind. It proved attractive but not easy to realise for many. Now, we have obeyed under threat. As the director of one of Netherland’s leading newspapers recently said (and I’m not straight quoting): since nobody knows what’s going on, we found it wiser not to criticise the government in any capacity. Indeed. Soon, people will start to regret this. Some already have. They understand they have gained nothing with giving up their fundamental civic rights. They realise all this is not going to be over until some hotshot says so, whenever that may be. Perhaps some even see they should have known up front this might happen. This is not the first time a crisis is being used against us, though it certainly is playing out to be the most devastating to date.

 

It is difficult to pinpoint a precise starting date, but let’s argue things began changing by the end of the last century, somewhere during those comfortable nineties. Little by little, carefree Western consumers were being lured out of their comfort zone and acquainted with a rougher reality where life is not always as shiny as advertising still would like you to have it, where bad luck and severe consequences are to be accepted as what inevitably will happen to your loved ones. The first big whammy came with 911, which led to a lot of those carefree freedoms getting lost and irritating rules implemented, life having the fun taken out of it to a certain extent. But hey, we were strong, we knew how to persevere, individually, we would come up with practical solutions to our first world predicament. Next, they stole our money, or part of it, with the Wall Street induced worldwide financial contraction whose consequences were placed on the weakest shoulders, as always. That made many people dependent on government largesse, with those who so far had escaped the blade fearing the next round of quantitative tightening. Easing is only there for the already rich. As consequences go, suddenly it wasn’t so thrilling anymore to oppose the official version (poor man bad) as it might get you into trouble with your bank account feeding institutions. Many people kept quiet and accepted they were being skinned by their overlords, who now had them out of peace and out of money. Then came the third blow.

 

Yes, covid. There’s nothing accidental about it. She was meant to be. It is debatable whether fate interfered with her release or it was all human engineered, but no questions can arise over the abuse authorities are making of her. Highly arbitrary decisions wipe out whole business communities and nobody is thinking any of it. Children are melting away before our eyes. Meanwhile, we are being ridiculed with those facemasks, now compulsory anywhere outside the home in many places, though their influence is close to zero. They tell that we are sheep, those masks, and it is true. We place enormous trust in a government that tells us we can’t trust ourselves any longer, let alone our neighbours. But we don’t care about such inconsistencies; all we seek is comfort and relief from fear. Let it be over! We have become too weak, too civilised, to see that we are being had. By the time sufficient people understand what’s going on, we will be atomised into our private rooms which we may not leave, hooked on censored internet and regular doses of poison, for our own good. We will be locked out from any physical contact. If that doesn’t kill us, then what will?

 

Desperate thoughts should not seek their final outcome, so I will try to end on a more positive note. These are revolutionary times. The elite are ahead, as they made the revolution, but they equally grasp for control of the chaos they deliberately created. We know, whenever there has been a chance of change, it was in difficult times. We have failed, so far. We never even came close. Now we are closer to the end of our era, our world, our lives, then ever before. I’m not talking linear time here, but the eb and flow of history. So, can we do it? Can we get rid of this parasitic bunch and create the world of ordinary people, the vast majority in any country, who have come to get to know each other a bit through internet and who have realised that within money differences most citizens around the world live in comparable circumstances? This is our task. This is the enlightenment of the human race. A world without oppressive leadership where people make informed decisions and share as much as they can. In a way, it is the world of Klaus Schwab without Klaus Schwab. Or any other Klaus Schwab. Let them eat cake.