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Experience Wins Over Thinking and Reading


Real world experience is so important, compared to reading one more book. For instance I have read a lot about the Great War, World War I. But at some point I think, "I don't even feel sorry for you guys. Why didn't you rebel against your leaders, rather than be slaughtered every day?"

In fairness, French soldiers did rebel in 1918. They would no longer 'go over the top'  when the officer blew the whistle -- they would no longer participate in suicidal and useless charges. But they held their ground defensively. They weren't deserters.

Still, how could the vast majority of citizens and soldiers throw their lives away, based on the commands of leaders who were murderous fools?

That is one good thing in experiencing the virus lockdown. I see a nation of sheep, throwing its livelihoods away, based on nothing but propaganda from the boob toob. Actually, we should stop comparing Americans to sheep, and change it to earthworms, instead.


The American economy, 2020.

Now I realize how complacent and obedient the vast majority of peasants is to Authority, regardless of the consequences.

Another thing that always troubled me was how contemptuous German leaders were towards democracy, during the unification of Germany around 1870, and for decades more, all the way to 1945. Why was the attitude towards democracy so different in Germany, compared to other countries in northwest Europe?

Perhaps it was just the German penchant for brutal honesty. Does the general public really decide all that much in the vaunted democracies? This point could be illustrated many ways, but the virus lockdown makes the point more powerfully than books or mere thinking. I suspect that very few hands were involved in the basic decisions of the lockdown, and that many of those hand were unelected. How much input was there, from the general public?

Bismarck and the Kaiser were right about democracy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Democracy aside, had lockdown decisions been left to the general public, I suspect we’d be carting off bodies in dump trucks by now. I’d like to think that bona fide epidemiologists forced scientific thinking on the science deniers in the current administration. In general, worldwide lockdowns appear to be working. Should the response have been executed earlier? Of course. In this pandemic case, an anarcho libertarian approach would have been disastrous.

Chris
Chris, "worldwide lockdowns appear to be working." How would you know they are working? The destruction of an economy is "working"?
Anonymous said…
Working in the sense controlling transmission of COVID. Would you have done nothing? Just business as usual and let it spread?

Chris
Ed said…
Why must the "government' do something? Sweden's government has basically done nothing and they are no worse off because they have kept hands off. Their economy is also suffering because their people have 'voluntarily' distanced themselves.

The 'governments' of the world, such as they were, in the 1300s did nothing to control the transmission of the Black Death plague. Similarly, the 'governments' did relatively nothing to control the Spanish Flu in the early 20th century. The U. S. government did relatively nothing to control the Asian Flu in this country in 1957.

Why must there now be a worldwide 'lockdown' to control the transmission of this most recent virus/plague? Why is is necessary for the 'governments' to destroy the lives of countless people that are not infected to save the lives of the few that are? Are people of today so ignorant that they can not protect themselves as they did in the 1300s, the early 20th century and in 1957?
Anonymous said…
Take your pick, massive loss of life or a battered economy. Your way would eventually lead to economic disaster when a decimated workforce was not there to clock in. As for me, I’ll vote for saving lives.

Chris
Chris, special (draconian) precautions could have been taken for the tiny fraction of the population that is especially vulnerable. The rest of the population could have gotten moderate precautions, since the virus isn't a great danger to them.

The result would have been that most casualties would have been averted, and most economic damage would have been averted.
Anonymous said…
I agree with that. Unfortunately our ill prepared, politically motivated, self centered elected officials were not up to the job. Therefore, there was no alternative to a lockdown.

Chris