World Leaders

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Clarissa

February 16, 2021

Does anybody have an explanation for why Australia is the world leader in COVID insanity? And Canada is the runner-up?

It’s a serious question. I can’t stop wondering what they’d do if they had an illness that really made people drop dead in the streets and really hurt children. If this is how they act over COVID, what would they do over something bigger?

There’s some sort of a deep defect in these cultures that is causing this. I hope somebody studies it. If you can justify sticking your head into a trash bag, locking people up against their will, and snitching on your neighbor because his grandkids came by to see him, what won’t you do? Is there a limit? Spooked badly enough, what wouldn’t you do?

We always ask these questions after a culture has gone off the rails and loaded people into ovens. Maybe it’s a good idea to start asking this question before it goes that far.

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13 responses to “World Leaders”

cliff arroyo

February 16, 2021

“some sort of a deep defect in these cultures that is causing this”

I tend to think that it’s a combination of cultural factors (especially uncertainty avoidance*) while low UA cultures (like Canada and Australia) deal better with day to day uncertainty they tend to fall apart when things really go wrong (before getting it together again).

There’s also the idea of end stage neoliberalism…. (though arguably the UK is further along that road than either Canada or Australia)…

There’s also treating people like resources to be managed and exploited…. (that’s what the Chinese Communist Party does too and AFAICT both Canada and Australia are owned to differing extents by Chinese capital).

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2021
  
  It’s a very rich idea about the connection between the COVID response and treating people like resources. I need to think about it some more but it’s a very deep idea. Thanks!
  
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2. PaulS
  
  February 16, 2021
  
  Chinese capital? Are you saying the Chinese invented the HR department?
  
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methylethyl

February 16, 2021

It’s screwy enough here. My mom is right now sitting out in the hospital parking lot trying to get someone in the ER on the phone, because Dad had to be dropped off with a cough and fever (his GP is out of town). They won’t let her in, even though she lives in the same house. My elderly Dad does not deal well with medical professionals of any stripe. He needs her in there to mediate. I can’t even imagine what a fustercluck that will be if they admit him.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2021
  
  I’m so sorry this is happening! We had to hand my mother over to the Canadian medical establishment back in summer, and she speaks no English or French. It was unnerving.
  
  Good luck to your parents! I hope it’s nothing serious when the your Dad.
  
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  1. methylethyl
    
    February 16, 2021
    
    Here’s hoping!
    
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    1. cliff arroyo
      
      February 16, 2021
      
      “Here’s hoping!”
      
      Yes, all good wishes for you all! I’ll be holding my thumbs (as they say here) for you.
      
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      1. methylethyl
        
        February 16, 2021
        
        They say he’s got pneumonia, they sent him home with drugs, told him not to go to work. No medical personnel were harmed and nobody is pressing charges. So we’re good.
        
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        Pen
        
        February 16, 2021
        
        I hope he recovers quickly!
        
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        methylethyl
        
        February 16, 2021
        
        Oh, we all do. Nobody wants to have to deal with hospitalizing him 😉
        
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mitchellporter

February 16, 2021

News here (Australia) says the garbage bag was used by someone for privacy. They were in some covid quarantine hotel where there was an outbreak, and were to be bussed to a new hotel, and wanted to hide from the media waiting outside. Perhaps there was nothing else in their hotel room that could hide their face and which they could take with them?

This is coming from the state of Victoria which has most of the intelligentsia, Australia’s most leftwing state government, and also has been having the most lockdowns and outbreaks. There seems to be a mini culture war happening there, over whether various incidents are symptoms of covid-hysteria authoritarianism, or are non-stories manufactured by local right-wing media.

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1. Clarissa
  
  February 16, 2021
  
  Here’s an article on the conditions in the Canadian lockdown facilities:
  
  https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/welcome-to-the-hotel-of-last-resort-a-government-run-quarantine-facility-where-you-really-dont-want-to-be/wcm/92b83b04-32c9-4554-ab03-b58e6a458cb2/amp/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=National%20Post%20-%20Posted%202021-02-16&utm_term=NP_HeadlineNews&__twitter_impression=true
  
  It’s not surprising people go nuts after such an experience.
  
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Just George

February 16, 2021

Imo the main factors are things like 1) the origin of the nation at the time of founding and resulting legislative structure 2) primary resource richness 3) proximity to and infiltration by the authoritarian capitalist country of China 4) very strong trade/labor unions.

Regarding the first factor, Australia was colonised by the English a little after the US civil war, and was set up as a penal colony/plantation without anything like a bill of rights. The bureaucrats were put in charge on day 1 without any real way to get them out beyond rebellion, which of course became even more impossible after so-called “gun control” was implemented in the 1990s.

Regarding the second factor, Australia, like Canada, is rich in primary resources and as such doesn’t have much incentive to be practical about anything. There is no need to be practical when there is a government eager to pay fake welfare cheques to people so that they stay home without disturbing anything.

Regarding the third factor, Australia has been doing an enormous volume of trade with China since the 1990s. In the beginning, most of the trade was in the realm of big business (resource based etc) but even 20 years ago was so enmeshed that local businesspeople would send their children to Chinese expos in China. Along with that China sent hundreds of thousands of so-called “students” to the visa & passport factories everyone calls universities.

In the past 10-12 or so years China became more confident and much more aggressive politically, which meant that Beijing began to have a much greater effect on policy.

Regarding the fourth factor of very strong trade unions, as spoken about earlier, Australia was set up as a resource colony/plantation that was run by bureaucrats in such a way where the population did not have benefit of things like a bill of rights etc which in turn meant that the only way that the population could protect itself against the bureaucracy was to join together in number.

So unlike the USA which is a nation that has a legal structure/laws/statutes/bill of rights that allows a single individual to assert himself/herself against the whole government, in Australia there is no such legal structure. Anyone who goes into an Australian court finds that the judiciary are bureaucrats who are beholden to the politicians and other senior bureaucrats who appointed them, which means that the judiciary is practically the enemy of the common person.

A good example of that, by the way, is a famous case to do with hydrocarbons and the new nation of Timor Leste, where the political/judicial apparatus acted punitively against a man who was doing the right thing years after the fact practically psychopathically, in what I personally think was a precursor to the treatment of Julian Assange – who is of course another Australian who has no friends in the judiciary.

At the same time, the kinds of institutions that you’d expect some good ideas about freedom or reform to come from, the universities, depend on money from the authoritarian capitalist China, which in turn means that Australian universities have degraded and begun to mirror those in the Balkans, where students are accepted based on the wealth/connections of their parents as much as their grades, where jobs in universities are often awarded in the same way.

So anyway when you put all that together, Australia is a place where a bureaucratic structure has been in charge for a long time along with their pedophile friends in the judiciary, who were trained (by largely idiots) in China dependent universities, where the population, while boisterous and agreeable on the surface, are actually for the most part very easily cowed and reluctant to enter into conflict with authorities, besides being disarmed anyway.

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