The speakeasy world of COVID lockdowns

Some were unable to escape the New Normal. Other times, which world to live in was a choice. The New Normal was a prison in which the official rules were taken seriously. But as a prison, it operated at the minimum security tier. It was organized like a panopticon – a prison with a single guard who was supposed to observe all of the inmates. The panopticon’s design is intended to economize on the need for guards to staff it. Through fear, “inmates are effectively compelled to regulate their own behaviour.”

In Speakeasy World, people were aware that they lived in a panopticon. But they realized that the one and only guard was probably checking TikTok on his mobile phone during working hours instead of surveilling prisoners. The prisoners made a calculated bet that the guard was not paying attention to their transgressions. …

But that line of thinking does not take into account an entirely different hypothesis: what if the authorities were not even trying? What if they didn’t care whether anyone followed the rules? Would they have been willing to turn on the screws enough to eliminate the Speakeasies that they made such flagrant use of? Where would Rep. Pelosi have gone for a haircut? Where would Gov. Newsom take his cronies for dinner?

Is Speakeasy World a bug or a feature? As we look back it is looking more and more like the latter. The political class trolled the public. And when they were caught, they did not even pretend to care. Exhibit A: watch this video of Governor Newsom smirking his way through a non-apology-apology. My aim here is not to criticize their hypocrisy – as much as they have earned that. Rather, my point is this: in spite of endless repetition that they were keeping us all safe, the mayors and governors didn’t not seem concerned at all for their own safety. They didn’t care. They did not believe that the rituals made them any safer, because they knew there was no danger.

[Blumen sidles up to the issue of surveillance and reporting in the pandemic lockdowns, or whatever one wants to call them, but hopefully that will get explored more. The panopticon analogy misses an important point — the snitch culture that social media cultivates and that government exploits. That snitch culture played an important role in suppressing dissent and debate before, during, and after the pandemic, and it was critical to efforts by the state to make examples of people who resisted lockdown orders too publicly. — Ed]