Rebecca
In the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s, people who had lived together peaceably for generations suddenly acted like psychopaths. The undesirables were not just denied medical treatment should they dare to survive the onslaught; they were then pursued to death by formerly congenial village dentists who now appeared to relish perpetrating atrocities on people with whom they would once have shared a meal. How could this happen in a modern society, asked the historians and UN observers?
One of the primary benefits of Western society has been individual rights as a pillar of human rights, including the side effect that bullying by the state or other citizenry is anti-Western and wrong. But politicians always used to warn that civilisation is only skin deep, with sudden flares of atrocity only an eye-blink away if society allows (or elects) intolerant group-think.
Now fast forward to 2021 and it appears that NZ politicians of every persuasion have lost interest in Western ideals, instead competing to see who can shout loudest that all must submit to a new Church of C19 and the mRNA Vaccine Saviour.
If you refuse to be saved then you are a bad person who deserves to be burned at the stake: initially virtually by the online baying mob, but also if you need medical treatment or want a job…. and who knows what will be next if politicians and media keep stoking division and hatred based on what they call “science” but whose intolerant certainty is more cult than science.
Economist Keynes is supposed to have quipped “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” But this sort of logic is despised by priests of the new Church of C19; if the facts change, that is disinformation! Only the context-free integers of doom are factual, and proof of the devil waiting at the door unless you embrace the mRNA jab to save your soul. Those who refuse are Satanists and you know what you need to do to them, without having to be told by the priests.
For completeness: I’ve had my jab and would encourage others of my antiquity to do the same, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the vengeful group-think that journalists and others express so proudly, and a nation that seems more intolerant and divided than ever.