One can't know, because Boris Johnson and "his ministers" do not reveal their real reasoning, but it seems that really what they are after is a big Reset. This, I posit, is a major subtextual reason for lockdown, and why they love it so ("Oh we hate to do this... but haven't any choice it the matter, dearies... ha ha ha...").
They are not stupid. They know there is a danger in the gap between those who govern and those who are governed, the popularly felt chasm gap between "elite" and ordinary people, the sense that political parties do not connect with and speak for millions, the general sense of disenfranchisement.
As lockdown sceptics (or, more accurately, opponents) many of us are shocked and outraged that lockdown is imposed and makes these wounds in our society so much deeper. Actually, I think Boris Jonson and co understand that, but they are playing a wager. They are betting that there is more cohesion ultimately to be gained through lockdown and an immediately subsequent populist resetting of the social contract than there is to be lost through lockdown.
That wager, I think, will be considered the fundamental wager of Boris Johnson's political career in its peak phase (i.e., from the Brexit campaign through his current premiership). Brexit was exactly a wager of this kind: a costly purchase of populist credentials, trying to reconnect the elite to the people, and the Tories think they have some resulting capital to spend because of their gains at the General Election (an overinterpretation of the results, which were actually more about the uselessness of Labour's positioning on the great issue if the day, none other than Boris's signature policy, Brexit). These are elites who have enough information to know that the carriage of their glory is rolling in rickety fashion downhill with decreasing wheel-grip on the rockstrewn old road which is our politics. They know they have to connect. Connecting is their big goal.
They think they are connecting with many through lockdown, and losing fewer. Worryingly, they may be right. Yet post-lockdown is still a big problem for them, which is why, I suggrst, they are actually rather happy to have scientists on hand, providing a supposed rationale for indefinite countrywide house arrest.
They want to connect with post-lockdown, too, because otherwise the wheels look like coming off. Yet the longer they go in lockdown, the more likely the wheels will come off. So longer lockdown always looks good to them, and they can always say it's regrettable but responsible and the only good choice, since they have established the necessary stupid vocabulary and phrases in the popular imagination.
Coming out of lockdown, for them, will be a terrible step of faith, so will only be taken slowly and hesitantly. But they ultimately will cast it precisely as the big Reset they are after. They will say it is necessitated by recovery, but actually it will be part of their larger gameplans to reconnect the country politically and to generate social cohesion.
Basically, they want modernity back with its relatively rigid structure and narrow spectrum of beliefs. They think they might get there. In this respect they are similar to Putin, through of a different cut of cloth.
But in fact they won't get very far. We will get stuck in a frustrating no man's land between institutionally supported modernist nostalgia and the popularly diffusions of post-modern society. It will be a nagging frustration, lasting probably for many decades, so likely the rest of my life.
Basically, they will fail but declare victory again and again. And we will need to develop laughlines, lest we develop a permanent sneer.
The snag is that there appear to be some intelligent MPs who are in the Tory Party, as it happens. They are only getting away with it on account of having a large majority, after all, some of their ‘backbenchers’ are not keen on lockdown, or anything to do with it. In the end, it could be down to the 1922 committee to sort them out.
Agree, agree and agree..but..history repeatedly shows that such regimes at some point collapse. Maybe ‘we’ won’t see the collapse and maybe this uncomfortable realisation is what is required to be accepted. If not for us then for the generations to come.
I wish I had your optimism fudge. However I don't see a way out. There will be no collapse of the coming regime. It has been trialled with blistering success in China. Why has the CCP not collapsed?
I'm afraid that IMO once the mandatory vaxxes are here it's game over. With the tech at the elites disposal these days and the benefit of the "black mirrors" to spew out propaganda 24/7 its hard to see how a weakened, dependant, unarmed public can ever hope to fight back.
Truth is they wont...
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population... But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”
The future will be won or lost over the next few months. Either way it will be a nasty journey and the world as we knew it pre-covid is IMO gone for good.
Agree, agree and agree..but..history repeatedly shows that such regimes at some point collapse. Maybe ‘we’ won’t see the collapse and maybe this uncomfortable realisation is what is required to be accepted. If not for us then for the generations to come.
I wish I had your optimism fudge. However I don't see a way out. There will be no collapse of the coming regime. It has been trialled with blistering success in China. Why has the CCP not collapsed?
I'm afraid that IMO once the mandatory vaxxes are here it's game over. With the tech at the elites disposal these days and the benefit of the "black mirrors" to spew out propaganda 24/7 its hard to see how a weakened, dependant, unarmed public can ever hope to fight back.
Truth is they wont...
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population... But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”
The future will be won or lost over the next few months. Either way it will be a nasty journey and the world as we knew it pre-covid is IMO gone for good.
Actually Fudge is right. The regime will decay and mutate. I don't see China as a blistering success. I worked in Asia from 1984 and in China 2000 to a few years ago. I naively tried for 3 years to set up an Welsh-Chinese technical JV. I saw CCP as afraid of the middle class as the middle class are as contemptuous of the CCP zealots and corrupt middle bureaucracy. Many people remembered the cultural revolution years with horror - they were then struggling to survive and preseve their families. The CCP in turn made a deal - which was that they would provide ever increasing prosperity provided the populace accepted their authority. They now are stuck running up a downgoing escalator. They have achieved a huge amount but is it sustainable. Climate change ? forget it - its not important to them in the context of domestic industrial growth. They are ameused by the west's embracing this new religion.
It will start with our 'proles' it might take a few years or a few decades. But people are waking up now. How far they will go will depend on the arrogance or otherwise of this and succssive governments
Some absolutely brilliant although very scary and disturbing posts here.
Whilst l agree with Jock that the current regime's power just has too much momentum now to be halted or weighlayed, Fudge and Richard T's prediction that at some stage it will all come tumbling down is also true, however the question is how much damage will be done, how many lives will be lost and how many deep scars will be left. If you use the example of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia their actual reign was not that long in terms of world history, but the loss of life was colossal and scars left absolutely tragic.
...history repeatedly shows that such regimes at some point collapse. Maybe ‘we’ won’t see the collapse and maybe this uncomfortable realisation is what is required to be accepted. If not for us then for the generations to come.
Agree. We face the challenge of both working somehow (how?) of overcoming this ASAP, and also being inwardly at peace with the fact that it may not occur. This is as much a spiritual challenge as it is a political challenge. We need to look for the wisdom of those who have learned before ourselves how to keep their minds free, their hope real, and their efforts true under dictatorial tyranny.
