As IF Times

In only a week’s time, the entire focus of media hand wringing and angst surrounding the melodrama which was Covid, has all but disappeared. It has now refocused on the new disaster du jour, which is the military conflict in the Ukraine brought on by the Russians.  Fauci has so quickly disappeared from his regular offerings of inane utterances that he may be in witness protection.

You can almost see and hear the cartoon vapor trail as experts clamber to get on board the next media shiny thing.  Like the Covid narrative before, the usual and predictable cast of pundits are all on one side of the conflict.  To sum it up, Putin bad, Ukraine good.  When asked about the reason for this position, they tell you that it’s obvious: Ukraine is a democracy and Russia is about Commie despotism, it’s an easy call. We have a madman in the guise of Putin against the reasoned, democratic voices of the West.

Or is it?  The incredible irony of people in the coddled West who willingly submitted to 2 years of forced lockdowns in their activities and movements, of being forced to wear masks and endure harm from unproven vaccinations (now proven and documented) as well as being beaten and arrested by their own governments for failing to comply, or to even voice opposition is tragically comical.   But to fight for democracy in a nation far away, which actually isn’t one, proves beyond any residual doubt that, yes, people are as dumb as they seem. People who wouldn’t fight for their own right to breathe air are suddenly up in arms about freedoms.  The same crowd that wants patriotic Ukrainians to fight back and protect their homeland borders,  want people to disarm here and leave the borders unprotected.  While nationalism is considered a bad idea in America, Ukrainians need to fight for theirs.

Like the one sided views on the Covid farce at its peak,,  every news outlet, politician and even opportunistic corporations are now publicly expressing their outrage at Putin’s aggression over a helpless neighboring nation.  Governments have imposed economic sanctions against Russia and in particular, the banking industry, to cut off Russian activities with the west.  Not to be outdone, a veritable who’s who of International commerce have announced their withdrawal from doing business with Russia as per the graphic above.  In addition, Russian vodka and products are being removed from sale and people with any Russian lineage are being ostracized.  The great protector of democracy in North Kanadia even detained a planeload of Russian nationals while in Canada.

If you have a look at the companies haughtily cutting Russia off, you’d be hard pressed to find any more than a fraction of them that Russia couldn’t live without. If you think about it, this in fact would be true for most nations.  How devastating a blow would it be to the average Russian not to have access to Porno hub or TikTok? How will they survive not being able to view the latest cat videos on Facebook and Instagram?  Coca Cola is hardly a loss because it doesn’t go with vodka anyway.  Playstation and Nintendo are toys.   Sony, Disney, Paramount and Netflix are essentially pushing Western propaganda ( with no recent good products ) so that’s no loss.  Danone yogurt; ok that’s a blow.  Harley Davidson is a blow to the 5 customers they have in Russia because the 3 week riding season will be all but dead.  Nike and Adidas; they can buy their stuff under the table and much cheaper right from the factory next door in China.  Auto companies including all of the major brands have declared their cessation of doing business in Russia.  We doubt this will last more than 3 weeks because that business is so mercenary.  We’re not even sure if Ford or GM sell any cars there.

Come to think of it, there’s a darn good chance that Russians will ultimately wind up a better nation without exposure to so many of the useless things that seem to have such a hold on Western societies.  These companies may learn that they aren’t needed in any society. That’ll learn ’em.

link https://autistocrates.substack.com/p/aristotle-on-tyranny?utm_source=url

There’s an old saying that “there’s nothing new under the sun”.  For those interested, that line is taken from a passage of the Bible, under Ecclesiastes (1:4-11 for those researching)  In the passage, the reference was more about the consistency and predictability of life and of people.

The human experience can be viewed the same way of course and history has shown that basic elements of human nature always manifest themselves in almost predictable fashion.

As far back as Aristotle’s time, the reality of some people desiring to control other people has been a common trait among all societies.  In fact, he accurately describes the method by which tyranny takes over a society.

“Their first end and aim is to break the spirit of their subjects. They know that a poor-spirited man will never plot against anybody.”

“Their second aim is to breed mutual distrust. Tyranny is never overthrown until people can begin to trust one another; and this is the reason why tyrants are always at war with the good. They feel that good men are dangerous to their authority, not only because they think it shame to be governed despotically but also because of their loyalty to themselves and to others and because of their refusal to betray one another or anybody else.”

“The third and last aim of tyrants is to make their subjects incapable of action. Nobody attempts the impossible. Nobody, therefore, will attempt the overthrow of tyranny, when all are incapable of action.”

An essay discussing this is in the link above.

So, we can see that the methods by which tyrannically minded people use to control passive people have all but been prescribed since Aristotle’s time and likely before then.

This is an interesting perspective as we view the happenings of the world in the past two years through the constants of human behaviour. We refer of course to the chain reaction of events spawned over 2 years ago (!!) by a supposedly deadly virus.

Using fear as the big stick, the majority of the world’s societies fell lockstep into protocols which were implemented essentially at the behest of one man.  Truly amazing when you think about it.  An entire planet of 7 billion people had their lives uprooted by the utterances of ONE man. Fear of the unknown was the means by which entire nations were cowed into protocols that, today, are laughably comical.  But in the absence of real data, it was easy for the people who supposedly knew better to create rules out of thin air.

Fast forward to our present day, a full two years after the original alarm about a global catastrophe which would cause death on a scale only seen in video games and NONE of the projections have played out in any way whatsoever. Ironically, the real tragedies show up in the so called remedies to the virus.

What’s even more amazing is how the narrative has morphed seamlessly into protocols which have nothing to do with a generally benign virus.  Even as evidence piles up from nations worldwide that the ‘pandemic’ is over and that measures taken during the threat were proven useless, certain nations, notably the ‘free’ western nations of the US, Canada, France and Germany are doubling down on measures having no link to illnesses.  Odd how the virus is only deadly in wealthy nations.

To cite one example, the Canadian government took the extraordinary ( and illegal) measure of restricting citizens’ bank accounts if they were deemed to be anti-government operatives. This characterization would include a waitress who donated $10 to a freedom rally.

Clearly the agenda has moved from containing a virus to containing and controlling entire populations.  As we now know, the methods being used are timeless… and timelessly effective.