Tanaiste Leo Varadkar arrives for a cabinet meeting at government buildings this morning
Circa 66.9% of ppl 16+ now fully vaccinated in Ireland or roughly 68.9% over 18+. That compares with 70.5% in the UK. We should overtake them in next week or so. Well done @hselive 👏 https://t.co/4SXyBDJJwO
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) July 27, 2021
This afternoon.
Take that, so-called United Kingdom.
You’ll never beat the (southern) Irish
Well done, everyone.
Earlier: Teen Spirit
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Figures and statistics and smoke and mirrors.
Deserves a “Was it for this” headline…
Hah! You loved Charger coming on here every day boasting unctuously about the UK vaccine rollout and mocking our government for being so far behind, but Varadkar makes a factual statement our progress relative to the UK and suddenly it’s ‘how very dare he.’
I miss him
Vaccine rates in the UK have plummeted as they have ran out of willing people to jibby jab- the same will happen here too of course.
On Public health we have two main choices.
1. An 80 – 90% majority get vaccinated. Less variants get time to incubate in the unvaccinated population. Normal life can reopen with some caution, but gradually over time we could have no restrictions. It could all be over within two years or less.
2. 30 – 50% of the population refuse to get vaccinated, the variants grow more over time, maybe mutate into something far worse. We have to keep going into lockdowns every 4 or 6 months, for years on end! This could absolutely destroy peoples careers, lives, children’s education, home security and on and on it goes. The Spanish flu lasted over a decade in total.
I know which option I want. I hate lockdowns, I want to make the most of life, especially being able to visit family and friends back home or having them visit me where I live. I’m fully vaccinated, all of my friends and family are back home. We just want to get on with life.
Our Tanaiste Leo Varadkar looks bloated with pride!
I think conformism has traditionally been a siginificant part of the Irish psyche – maybe more so than Britain. Tragically it’s now being weaponised against us.
I like these recent musings from Covid-response critic, Robin Monotti:
“Conformism is a prerequisite to implement the fascist state because the fascist state is primarily self policing.
What I am trying to say is that this system of self policing of others until they conform to the will of the state is a technique that was used during Italian fascism and is being used today under the mass injection and mass obedience to the restrictions and measures campaign.
This is different to the Bolshevik terror for the simple reason that the Bolsheviks were a small minority that consolidated its power through the Cheka. This is also different from the Stalinist purges in which dissidents were removed and sent to the gulags by the NKVD.
This is not what is happening now, what is happening now is a system much more similar to the self policing fascist society which was achieved through the promotion of conformism by the media and the state. Much like what is happening now with the injection campaign, and what was happening during the lockdown with people turning on each other for not wearing masks for example.
This self policing has one psychological-societal prerequisite: the willingness to conform to a group which conforms to the instructions from the state.
The willingness to conform was created during lockdown, with coordinated actions. The “we are all in it together” mantra plays precisely this role. In reality we were never all in it together, some were at the driving wheel all along, and others had to make way for the vehicle of fear to plough through all it could find.
Erich Fromm’s description of authoritarian conscience is perhaps a less political and more psychological description. What it also rests on is conformism.
Conformism leads to a self policing country according to the interests of those in power, while pretending to be caring for others.
This is how the centrists & liberal left, who at least in the UK are meant to oppose what is going by sitting on the opposition benches, and in the US through their claims of identifying with anti-fascism, have instead been hoodwinked in supporting the project of the self policing masks, lockdowns and injection fascism state while believing they are doing something for the common good.
They were and are being easily fooled, when they are not directly complicit and personally benefiting from it by painting themselves as those with a sense of superior morality. Instead, those who think of themselves as more altruistic in this case can be described is extremely gullible and prone to the manipulation of conformism carried out primarily by the state on its people. This manipulation is achieved through fear based campaigns and false solutions which are being offered to consolidate the power of the state, not to save grandma. “
I think linking the efforts of a society that comes together to make sacrifices and work together under severe constraints and difficult circumstances during a global health emergency to the conformity brought about through surveillance, psychological terror, indoctrination and threat of violence in authoritarian states is disgusting, but also corrosive of the social bonds that hold communities together in and out of times of crisis. This reeks of the sort of libertarian individualism that finds all collective action except that of making private profit reprehensible and illegitimate.
Sorry to be blunt, but as I see it you’re firmly in the group of the gullible who can’t come to terms with what is happening. and for that reason you’re indulging in pseudo-intellectual attacks on others for pointing it out. Wanting to resist the complete demise of liberal democracy as it’s being systematically being eroded before our very eyes under the pretext of “safety” is not about “libertarian individualism”.
Here’s a socialist perspective from journalist Connor Kelly:
https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-1-our-brand-new-shiny-fascist-state/?doing_wp_cron=1627306309.3190109729766845703125
‘While most of the mainstream left have been obsessing over fringe neo-nazis and denouncing much of postwar culture as white supremacy, they have been cheering on, aligning themselves with, and justifying the new fascism. The main point of contention as we can see so clearly this week with the cries of ‘We demand stricter orders!’ – is that the new fascism isn’t fascist enough for them. But it is understandable. They cannot recognise what is occurring as fascism because they imagine that were fascism to return it would be goose-stepping, Sieg Heiling and murderously racist, or perhaps under the guise of Catholic values and militarism (which ought to be a demonstration of the many fasces of fascism).
But why should a fascist formation in the year 2021 closely resemble the Third Reich or Falangist Spain? Why under 21st century economic and social conditions shouldn’t it be modern, sophisticated, even (officially at least) anti-racist? Would fascism not function just as well on the basis of newly created identities, newly created grievances and newly created victims? But as governments state their intention to openly persecute a minority of the population through a population labelling system on the basis of ‘public health’, the RACIAL HYGIENE klaxon seems still to be silent in the mind of many a left-winger.
The main reason people refuse to see what is happening as the imposition of a new fascism is because they themselves are supporting it and participating in it. And if they have been or are supporting it then it couldn’t possibly be fascism. They are a good and moral person and could never support fascism, or more to the point could never be fooled into supporting it. Never underestimate how powerful the motive to retain one’s self image is. The longer this goes on and the more brutal the measures enforced the more powerful this motivation becomes. The difficulty of admitting you have been fooled is directly proportional to how much and for how long you have been fooled. Perhaps my labelling of the new regime as fascist will make it even more difficult for people to break from it, as the immediate instinct is self defence – ‘I’m not a fascist. This guy’s a lunatic, he’s calling me a fascist!’ But it is important to name what is occurring. It is important to draw out the historical parallels to stir whatever moral intellect has been swamped under a mountain of propaganda.’
This is how the centrists & liberal left, who at least in the UK are meant to oppose what is going by sitting on the opposition benches, and in the US through their claims of identifying with anti-fascism, have instead been hoodwinked in supporting the project of the self policing masks, lockdowns and injection fascism state while believing they are doing something for the common good.
Bingo- absolutely spot on.