Title: So there's a pandemic
Category: Blog
Date: 2020-04-02
Tags: culture, politics

(**Note:** this article was written as is, but never published.  I
decided to retro-actively publish it because I felt it was important
to have it in my log of articles, but I also don't think I can really
add much more to this now since the political climate has shifted
quite hard.)

I've been meaning to publish this article a lot sooner, but here we
are.  The last month has been kinda bonkers.  Reading this in the
future might feel either funny or wistful.  Reading this in the now
must feel redundant.

Anyway, I've been working on a few things, and also have been thinking
about a few blog posts that I've wanted to write.  (One has already
gone up, so once again I'm a literary genius with getting my ordering
right).  I'll try to write a bit more, and care less about each
article being as polished as previously.  I feel like I've said this
before, so I'll try not to become _too_ spammy.  There's still
Twitter…


In this pandemic I've seen a lot of rhetoric mirror the security
discourse post 9/11.  Additional restrictions on public life are being
advocated for, because they will save lives.  Checkpoints, new rules
and regulations, everybody has an opinion on how things should be
running and very frequently run to the state to enforce anything
"health officials" say might work.

Ultimately this virus is the perfect threat: you can't see it, you
don't even know if you have it, you can endanger people by moving
around freely.  And there will never again be a time when "but what
about a virus" won't bu used to justify restrictions on the lives of
people.

And please don't interpret me saying these things as there being some
conspiracy to enact authoritariasism, as much as that sounds like a
novel you'd read, that's not how the world works.  This isn't
plotting, it's simple fascist opportunism.

