- Re: yes. Archived Message
Posted by Sinister Burt
on May 17, 2020, 11:39 am, in reply to "Re: yes."
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I agree the lockdown is damaging, but so is the virus - it's about which will do more damage at this stage. Much of the damaging aspects of the lockdown itself are side effects of tory/neoliberal policies/attitudes (eg not just doing a UBI rent freeze, not having a deicmated public health system; and not having removed our pandemic prep so we didn;t actually need a lockdown in the first place) - ie these are not necessarily inherent to lockdown, but just the background political noise of neoliberal britain (though given that we can't change those things anytime soon, they are effectively inherent). I know it's different in australia, but we've had enough deaths here to make it a real worry for the average person (i know someone who knows someone who's died) - i think this is a major reason the lockdown is popular here. It's easier for members of the public to be persuaded to wish suffering on huge swathes of people (ie the scroungers, the immigrants, "the others") if they can imagine it doesn't include any people like them - now they're being asked to go to work to be heroes (ie possibly die) for the sake of tory grandees' rentier income, it doesn't wash as well (as shown in the approval rate dropping to negative today). That of course is not to characterise anyone with genuine doubts about the lockdown as a social darwinist tory grandee - this is complex noone knows everything yet, and mistrust of our authorities is understandable/advisable - but those grandees and their motivations are a thing, and are behind the anti-lockdown push in the right wing media here. The tories were briefing that they were 'horrified' about how much the people responded to the lockdown, and have ever since done all they could to minimise it - i just can't see this as a double bluff (i'd need more evidence). I think the average uk rich git makes more money out of us all going back to work (and from our old relatives dying for that matter) than they do from social control particularly (cummings warner et al notwithstanding) - of course they'll take this opportunity to take any social control that seems useful to them, as is their wont, but not at the complete expense of their own wealth/rentier income. People higher up the international oligarch ladder might have more long term attitudes i suppose. |