Sibylla Bostoniensis

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The internet is full of people enraged by the US CDC's reduction – and all but elimination – of isolation guidelines for COVID, pointing out that the CDC's new guidelines seem to be more about what is good for "the economy" – which is to say, good for business interests – than what is good for the health of the people.

I don't think anyone's wrong to be enraged. Nothing that I am about to say is meant to make anyone feel better about the CDC's decision. I do not explain this as any kind of excuse.

There is a sense in which the CDC's decision is right. Not good, mind you, but correct: it brings their guidance back into alignment with our larger society's beliefs about the value of human life and health.

( Ours has never been a society that has particularly highly valued the health and well-being of the people of it... Read more [2,460 words] )

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[Continued from Part 2]

People functioning in Mode 2 are often fiercely jealous of what they see as their prerogative to subjugate others. If you make your living in the world by subjugating others, well, yes, threat to your prerogative to subjugate others is a threat to your livelihood, and an existential threat.

( People have literally gone to war to protect their presumed right to subjugate other humans and keep them captive as livestock. [3,980 Words] )

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I have various things to say about Trump, and perhaps I will get around to saying a bunch of them.

But what most disturbs me about Trump isn't Trump.

It seems to me that an awful lot of the hand-wringing about Trump – and don't get me wrong, there's much worthy of hang-wringing about Trump – is a distraction, a displacement, a derail from the more uncomfortable thing staring us all in the face.

Sure, he's a terrible human being doing terrible things who will, given the chance, go on to do even more terrible things. But Trump didn't make all those people show up at his rallies. Trump didn't compel them there at gun point. Nor does he have some sort of mind-control device to "brainwash" the masses.

Trump, when informed his "pledge" pose, which he elicited at his rallies, bore a disturbing resemblance to Nazi salute, discontinued it; it was his followers who begged – and may yet still be begging – that he resume it.

Make no mistake: this is grassroots fascism. Trickle-up fascism, if you will.

( This isn't about him. Americans, this is about us. [3,430 Words] )

This post brought to you by the 96 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

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