26 May 20
The pandemic is giving Canada and much of the rest of the world a belly-full of progressivism. Progressivism believes in rule-by-expert and the moral equivalent of war. Progressives believe that they can bring about a Utopia on earth with the right legal structure and a sufficient exertion of government power.
Progressives can be ruthless. Since they believe they can bring about Utopia, what would they refrain from doing to bring it about? What could possibly justify opposition to their aims and methods? Snobbery is a natural outlook of the progressive.
One of the tactics of progressivism is denormalization. Opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re not normal. They deserve nothing. When people get tired of the lockdown and protest absurd and arbitrary rules, they are denormalized: they’re denounced as “selfish,” and “irresponsible,” and associated with a “rise in the number of cases” - without proof. The media denormalizes part of their audience, and politicians, their constituents
President Donald Trump is routinely denormalized both as a president and as a human being. His supporters are likewise denormalized (you ain’t black unless you support Biden. Sarah Palin wasn’t a real woman.).
The coronavirus pandemic gave progressivism a glittering opportunity. The country is now governed upon the opinion of medical “experts.” The national lockdown is enforced with the moral urgency of a war.
This pandemic won’t last forever, however hard the government and all the tiny tyrants try to milk it. People are getting used to the method, and after it happens to you, you are no longer intimidated so easily by denormalizing. It’s happened to a lot of people.
If enough people get denormalzied, by news media and politicians, progressivism will have lost its most powerful psychological weapon.
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