The current mot juste among conservatives in the States is that we are at an inflexion point. This sounds authoritative, invoking as it does some alteration of course or change in trajectory; to me, it conjures up a moment of stillness, when the unknown next phase of the scenario is about to commence. It speaks to me not of the prospect of a smooth, controlled path, but rather a point at which competing forces have combined to force a temporary halt. The next direction may not be a continuation of the existing path. But I've always overthought things. And then Bumbling Boris did his thing from the dispatch box and effectively announced the end of the 'pandemic' in the UK and, by extension, globally even if not everyone can see it yet.
Spotting the fact that the Covid narrative has been falling apart is not an act of great foresight or analysis; it's been gathering pace for several weeks. So much of the manufactured crisis was about momentum, about keeping people in fear without the ability to think clearly, about taking the uncommitted along for the ride because they didn't feel they had an option. This was always a big ask with a seasonal respiratory virus, simply because it was always going to be less severe in the summer months and it was always going to ameliorate over time. Presumably, the hope was that 'vaccine' injuries could masquerade as the real thing if promoted vigorously enough.
Now we find ourselves in a place where 'vaccine' mandates are yesterday's solutions, where there is no reason for the unvaxxed to give up now when there is suddenly hope. Protests are vastly on the increase and police states seem to be gradually losing control of the streets. Critical mass, that state of grace where enough people are willingly or reluctantly on board that the rest can be victimized with minimal political blow-back, has not quite been achieved. And, even now, what the people think matters still. The Covid narrative has been overdone, Omicron is not terrifying the masses into further submission and the chains are being reluctantly released by some countries, the UK being at the forefront at present, due to the fact that Boris has been told that the Night of the Long Knives beckons if he doesn't temporarily halt his epic gaslighting of the British people.
In any event, President Brandon is definitely also at a crossroads right now. His toxic mixture of 'C'mon man', threatening whispering and obvious intolerance, combined with policies that are diametrically opposed to any that would actually work, has steadily eroded the support of the moderate Democrats and RINOs who wanted anyone but Trump and who were stupid enough to believe that Brandon and the Progressives who work him like a ventriloquist's dummy wouldn't do what they said they were going to do, when they were bothering to say anything at all during the course of the basement campaign. This cohort is stumbling from one delusion into another; they still think that the administration is overwhelmingly stupid, when it is only periodically so. The rest is by design.
For Brandon, the mandates were always on precarious ground. Because of the individual state level influence, it has never been a fait accompli and, as time has passed and courts have had their say, mandates have become just another loyalty test for businesses and public alike. Turbulence is being encountered at every altitude. The system has done its best to exhaust the sheople into compliance with all things mandate and has been remarkably successful at gulling the gullible and those in need of a governmental father figure to provide for their every need, physically and psychologically. Certainly, some of the more extreme personalities have embraced life membership of the Covidian Cult and won't be seen on this side of sanity for some time, if ever. We wish them luck on their journey, while hoping it would be a little quieter than it undoubtedly will be. Still, free speech and all that; means sticking up for the idiot's rights as well.
All is suddenly confusion. We have the heads of Pfizer and Moderna confidently predicting further jabs, either as a flu jab-like preventive or to tackle specific variants and yet none of the jabs are fully approved by any regulatory agency in Europe or the US. While the regime media is still ignoring the fact that the 'vaccines' are a disaster, the evidence is clear. And, as we have seen in the past couple of weeks, Big Media is signalling that it isn't happy; they give every impression of trying to get ahead of the coming fallout by getting a little retaliation in early. So, will the 'vaccines' ever be approved? It's difficult to see how.
How to count the ways in which Brandon and the gang have soiled the nest? Well, the Covid saga has been a fiasco from start to finish, which is clear to anybody who retains the use of enough little grey cells and it's becoming more apparent by the day. The media seems to have turned on the US administration and even the Progressives are finding fault, although their ire is reserved for the glacial pace of progress on their flagship policies of trashing the economy and winning elections in perpetuity, otherwise known as the Build Back Better bill and the For The People voting rights bill, which are two prime examples of Leftist doublespeak. Things won't be better and there will be even more of a licence to cheat in elections if either one of those bills is passed in the Senate.
But two doughty senators from the blue side of the aisle (the colors are the reverse in the UK) have brandished the middle finger to the regime and show no signs of backing down. The Lefties, being blinkered, self righteous bullies, can only think of the good cop, bad cop routine and alternate transparent manipulation of the figures to 'placate' the 'hesitant' twosome, with ad hominem attacks.
The regime has, therefore, backed them into a corner and given them only two options; continue to resist or collapse like a soufflé and kiss their political careers adieu. The regime has even managed to alienate them sufficiently that they won't even vote to abolish the filibuster, which would theoretically allow the Democrats to pass legislation on a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than garner the 60 that are required at present. As they only have 48 without their two recalcitrant senators, they would have to rely on Republican rebels. It's all very messy and very stalled, with little or no prospect of a resolution.
Brandon's popularity is in the tank, the economy is reeling with inflation at uncomfortable levels and shelves are increasingly coming up empty, with the worst still to come. The government has been caught in repeated lies, is dysfunctional inasmuch as the President and the VP seem to be at each other's throats and they are badly in need of a win. This may explain some of the current mixed messaging around Covid and the curious unavailability of testing kits. Less kits, less positive tests.
There can also be little doubt that the Democrats are going to get wiped out in the mid terms. Already, 28 Democrat House members have declared that they will not be contesting their seats this year. But the party of government have never given any indication that they are currying favor with real live voters; not during the Presidential elections and certainly not since. My guess is that they pinned their hopes on the For The People bill, banking on the fact that this legislation would afford them sufficient latitude to cheat that they could overcome the Republicans on the mail-in vote and the multitude of other corruptions that they will be dusting off once again. The Big Steal of 2020 generated a slow burn of disbelief, with a majority of Americans now aware of the monumental Democrat malfeasance. It's asking too much of public gullibility to believe that they will also win the mid terms under current regulations. The Republicans don't need a landslide, anyway. Five or six seats out of over 400 will do it.
Where America leads, the rest eventually follow and while there has clearly been comprehensive co-ordination globally, there are still local nuances. Some countries are clearly more committed to the trampling of rights than others, Western democracies foremost among their number. The tone has been more strident in Germany, France, Austria, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, for instance and the more invested in the process that a country is, the harder it will be for governments to disentangle themselves and still retain credibility with their electorates. The Aussies, for instance, will look ridiculous if they capitulate a week after Novakgate. That doesn't mean that they won't, just that they will be most reluctant.
Enthusiastic supporters of all things mandatable will have to pull off a neat trick; they will need to pivot towards a more simpatico demeanor, perhaps by allowing doubts to finally creep in to the narrative, before abandoning the ramparts with as much humility and self congratulation as they can muster. The latter characteristic will be a lot more authentic than the former. In the meantime, they need to go through the thrashing around phase, where they bemoan the fact that they have actually succeeded in grooming their populations into submission and are therefore reluctant to forgo the momentum gained. I don't see that they will have a choice but to give ground in the end, despite the fact that the Antipodeans are largely out of sight, out of mind and the Canadians are, well, Canadian.
Is it possible that some of the Western world will go one way and the remainder will go another? That some retain emergency powers under the guise of an ongoing 'pandemic' and are allowed to do so by their countrymen? I can see them trying; Trudeau, Ardern, Morrison, Macron and their ilk do not like losing. And some will undoubtedly hold out for quite a while, but in the absence of another crisis, I cannot see them sustaining it indefinitely. The probability is that they will lose control of the malleable middle; momentum is all and they are losing it fast.
Furthermore, there are big risks attached to trying to hang on for grim death. It is far better to do a Boris and make it appear as if abject surrender is, in fact, benevolence and make it that little bit more likely that the incoming critics will appear churlish. It's far easier to hate on a government which refuses to admit defeat and it is commensurately more acceptable to go hunting for scapegoats. The Czech Republic and Mexico have already abandoned plans for Green Passes and we are not even a week into the volte-face.
In Europe, the influence of the EU, while noisy at a strategic level with pronouncements about 'vaccine' passports and mandatory everything, has been negligible at the country level demonstrating, once again, that when the hurt is brought on, everyone goes their own way. If a structure is robust and beneficial, it doesn't splinter at the first sign of trouble, but the European Union has proven ineffectual in the financial crisis and in present times, also. It's Human Rights law has been routinely ignored, there has been no central co-ordination of practical measures and it has been no better than an irrelevance.
But what about the hangovers? What about mandates of all stripes? Are they going to be allowed to lapse? And what about accountability? The authorities have several outs here. They can claim that mandates were only ever intended to be temporary, which is why they were issued under guidance and Executive Orders (rather than created by legislation), which will now be rescinded. They can claim that they were only following the science, which is what they have been pretending to do all along, and if it appears that the finger of blame is going to pointed at them, they will throw the scientists under the bus. That's the beauty of constantly referencing the experts; if it subsequently transpires that they didn't know what they were talking about, they can be dispensed with painlessly. It's all about plausible deniability.
The problem is that this strategy relies on the public believing one of two things; that governments across the globe reacted proportionately throughout and are now graciously handing us back freedoms that were never theirs to take (they're hoping we don't notice that last part), or that they were collectively hoodwinked. Which of those scenarios plays out will depend on how much enthusiasm there is for a post-mortem. The single biggest mistake that the resistance can make right now is to go easy on the proto-tyrants. The legacy media, of course, won't be interested in forensically examining the debris and, even for us, banging on about the detail may be counter-productive. The general population must be heartily sick of discussing Covid by now.
The other elements of the plan are all still in place. Empty shelves, inflation, a more fractured and divided society are still factors that are with us and show no sign of being swept away any time soon. The rhetoric that some governments have used, accusing their own citizens of being domestic terrorists, has radicalized Leftists in ways that were not present before, or were at least latent. The likes of Macron, Brandon and Trudeau have gone all in with the divisive verbiage and are going to find it difficult to rein it back in now.
The panoply of actions, of which the 'pandemic' was merely a part, are still being acted out. The Democrats are still trying to brand anyone on the right a fascist, the social media companies are still banning people who challenge the narrative, elections are still going to be tampered with and undermined, the French are still trying to 'piss off' the 'unvaccinated' and good luck trying to find a holiday destination if you haven't succumbed to the propaganda and got the jab.
There are some pressing political concerns. Trudeau called an early election and barely hung onto power, Scott Morrison (Australia) is as unpopular as a fart in a spacesuit, Boris is blathering his way through crisis after crisis and is no-one's idea of an international statesman and Macron is up for re-election in April and ought to be treading carefully, although he is too arrogant to let such considerations affect him, preferring to nobble the opposition instead. And there's still Brandon and the mid-terms.
What will be the psychological effect of this unexpected reverse on the faithful? On the ones who swallowed every gobbet of falsehood that the system threw their way? I might feel a little let down, if I was closeted in their ward. I might even be a little angry if I discovered that I had been deceived, which is another very good reason for the elites to avoid any navel gazing. The true Covidians will probably go on believing, because reversing course isn't a strength, or even desirable when you believe that you are good and the opposition must, by definition, be evil.
And the sheople, the middle majority who acquiesce to whoever shouts loudest and longest – are they not going to feel a little miffed that they went along with the masquerade, even though they didn't want to get jabbed, just because they felt that they were being good citizens by doing so? Now they find that the refuseniks are not going to be punished for their civil disobedience and that they themselves will not be rewarded for their sacrifice. Who will they be most annoyed with? The Deplorables or the regime?
As for the global cabal; are we back to thinking they are stupid? Are we back to thinking that there is one homogeneous group? Or can we still see that there are fellow travelers here and the elites are using the Progressives for their own ends? Or that the big beasts among the Masters of the Universe are manoeuvring, using trusted sources and their own media companies to get the public to do what they couldn't manage privately and alter policy? The elites are certainly not infallible, and are prone to missteps due to the lack of anything approaching self reflection and the two groupings are also an unlikely alliance at the best of times.
Ideologues (particularly of the Leftist persuasion) and elites are not natural bed fellows, but as long as the money men were advancing the Progressive agenda, the obvious mismatch in motivations could be ignored. It's easy to be nice to one another when you're both winning. But money men often make ruthless, pragmatic decisions, by cutting losses, by not pursuing a losing strategy. Ideologues don't place much store in pragmatism and on reigning in their worst excesses. In this particular abusive relationship, the masters are in the process of abandoning the adopted offspring. And Brandon himself is proving to be an expendable disappointment, unable to get the vital bills through the Senate, either legitimately or otherwise.
It seems to me that the voting rights bills and the Build Back Better bill, as well as an end to the filibuster, are absolute must-haves for the regime, if they are to remain in power beyond January 2023. At least, they are in the Plan A play-book. But is it possible that there is a Plan B? I think that there must be and that a crisis of some sort will be its foundational plank. It may come in the form of another fake pandemic (this time, something that will hopefully strike the fear of God into all the minions, not just the susceptible) or it may be that the US goes to war with Russia, bizarrely.
There are compelling domestic political reasons for a war, but none that are remotely justified geo-politically. In truth, the US has no business telling Russia what to do with Ukraine, or to be floating NATO membership as a possibility. That is tantamount to incitement and Brandon knows it. What would they think of Russia offering the hand of military friendship to Mexico or Canada? Nonetheless, a hot war would serve three obvious purposes, as well as enriching the military industrial complex once more.
It would distract from domestic disaster, fueled by inflation, 'vaccine' mandates, 'vaccine' injuries and supply chain SNAFUs and it would give the regime the opportunity to sign yet more Executive Orders mandating states of emergency and it would simultaneously neuter the opposition. Indulging in domestic disruption while there's a war on rarely plays well with the voting public. And they might then manage to get to November's mid-terms in lock-down and steal them with de-facto mandatory mail in voting. It's a plan – I didn't say it was a good one. And it presents as far fetched, although I would invite skeptics to reconsider that view in the light of the seemingly unlikely strictures we have already endured.
The fact that crises of whatever hue are coming thick and fast is not in dispute, whether it be the adventurism of China with Taiwan, Russia with Ukraine or whatever disease is currently shutting down Chinese cities, with the Olympics imminent. Anxiety is, therefore, still being stoked and, after the debacle in Afghanistan, it was inevitable that America's resolve would be tested swiftly.
It's not as if any of this is an easy fix for Brandon. The trust has gone and it won't be coming back. Brandon has shot his bolt and I suspect that the administration has, too. You would think that, at some point, the issue of 'vaccine' injuries is going to become impossible to ignore. There is also the palpable risk that, if the regime loses credibility on its Covid narrative, there might also be a spillover into other parts of their belief system, such as climate change (discussion of which has been almost entirely absent from the public sphere, which is odd if we're all going to be doomed by our own inaction in under a decade).
The resistance is divided between one strand who still believe that this narrative is a stand-alone creation and that, now that it's collapsing, we'll get back to the Old Normal, and another cohort who see Covid as a Trojan Horse, a long envisioned means to an end, and who therefore have great difficulty in believing that the elites will give up all their gains and admit defeat on so flimsy a pretext. Because it is flimsy; sure, the politicians are unpopular, but that would hardly be a first. The legitimacy of their actions is now becoming openly questionable and, as long as a semblance of democracy remains (in people's minds, at least), the great push to the totalitarian future is temporarily forestalled.
So, Gates is over at the WEF talking about the next pandemic. Fauci is going on about the five stages of a pandemic and telling all and sundry that we are not out of the woods yet. It will be fascinating to see how different governments try to unravel their positions on vaccines and mandates, whilst simultaneously attempting to shore up their overall credibility.
However, it is very difficult to imagine that any Western country will be able to continue down the path to mandatory Green Passes. It may linger on as an app on a 'phone, but refusing entry to any service on the basis of Covid 'vaccination' is about to become unsustainable. It's still worth keeping an eye on the booster situation and on whether countries continue to insist on a third shot before restrictions are removed. Were that to be a theme, I would be highly suspicious of the motivation.
My feeling is that the elites and their Progressive partners have miscalculated. They may feel that they have pulled back from the brink, but they may very well have revealed too much of themselves prior to bailing out. They still retain control of the levers of power, but it is certain that not everyone in the hierarchy is a disciple or a drone and attempted coups/takeovers are creatures of momentum; once commenced, they need to be followed through. By not doing so, the system has momentarily revealed its soft underbelly, it's lack of omniscience.
It doesn't, after all, look like events have gone according to plan. Everything leading up to this sudden volte face pointed to the 'pandemic' being the final jumping off point for the final solution, but a combination of enough people holding out and a disobedient virus has temporarily halted progress. They didn't quite get over the hump and, in this transition period, there are just about enough democratic impediments remaining to thwart them. My guess would be that they are banking on us being too exhausted by it all to insist that they go back to the beginning and beyond, the better to prevent a repeat.
Nonetheless, there needs to be a reckoning; if there is not, then the back-up plan will still have worked. They won't have managed to parlay this particular crisis into achieving their desired end game, Covid will still prove to be another stepping stone rather than the final push, but they will have softened us up for next time. They will have left an intact understanding that the draconian measures they took may need to be repeated and, if that were to be necessary, you can bet your bottom dollar that resistance will be far less visible next time around.
Is it even remotely possible that governments were duped? They lied and manipulated statistics and facts from the outset, they hid effective treatments – thus contributing to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths – and they coerced vast swathes of the planet to take a 'vaccine' that they knew to be dangerous and ineffective. They won't want to dwell on any of the detail; that would be a self inflicted wound.
So, what happens now that the dissenters who insisted that the 'pandemic' was not what we were told it was, and who have now been proven right be 'nature's vaccine'? What will happen, if the regimes get their way, is a big fat nothing. There won't even be a reversion to the mean, let alone a wholesale examination of how the mean was so inadequately buttressed that we have ended up with our civil liberties thrown to the four winds. There won't be that examination, because the people that could order it and administer it are the very ones who are culpable; they'd be marking their own homework if it ever happened.
In any event, the concept of accountability is a moveable feat for the regime. They are clearly minimally accountable to Big Media and they have not bothered to court the voting public at any time over the past two years. Nevertheless, I would imagine that a period of calm would be the very worst option on their table. Another shiny new crisis would be favorite – anything to distract the eye and obviate a post mortem.
Momentously, Johnson has caved to pressure, to salvage his political life, and has set off a chain reaction that may prove unstoppable. He deserves no credit; he jumped before he was pushed, not because he wanted to jump. The Americans seemed to know that this capitulation was coming, judging by their own messaging in the past two or three weeks. Whether any others did is unknown. They certainly aren't behaving as if they did, but it's hugely unlikely that the rest of the Western world will be able to resist a velvet revolution. Let's see how much they kick and scream before the inevitable overtakes them. Or, alternatively, let's brace for impact as yet another new excuse to enslave us is conjured up before our very eyes. Just don't get the bunting out yet. I'd be flabbergasted if this turns out to be anything more than a temporary reprieve. The tyrants have got a taste for it now.