Attributes Of Democracy Quotes

You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.

[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.

Vox populi vox Dei

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.

Far from putting doubts and anxieties to rest religion often has the effect of intensifying them. It judges those who profess the faith more harshly than it judges unbelievers. It holds them up to a standard of conduct so demanding that many of them inevitably fall short. It has no patience with those who make excuses for themselves--an art in which Americans have come to excel. If it is ultimately forgiving of human weakness and folly, it is not because it ignores them or attributes them exclusively to unbelievers. For those who take religion seriously, belief is a burden, not a self-righteous claim to some privileged moral status. Self-righteousness, indeed, may well be more prevalent among skeptics than among believers. The spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion.

In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was.

And now, As I come near the end of this book in which I have recorded so many considerable achievements of the Americans, if I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their woman.

From Hobbes’s theory of the sovereign ruling by authority to Max Weber 250 years later, defining the state in terms of a monopoly of force is a slow loss of civil sensitivity. The term “democracy” is strictly a constitutional belief about how authority is generated, but today it most commonly commends rather than names a government that serves some particular interest, such as that of “the people.” The drift of these and other confusions of our political talk has always been to transform the subtle and balanced features attributed to the state in the past into an enterprise that facilitates our political preferences. It would be hard to deny that political sophistication has given way to a kind of partisan brutishness, some elements of which Oakeshott thought had already been recognized by Tocqueville in 1848: “… the passions of man, from being political, have now become social.” And this means that men care now far more about “the satisfaction of substantive wants” and the power of government needed to supply them than about freedom and constitutionality.

I ask this in the name of democracy and all the attributes that are associated with the redemption and freedom of nations.

As my friend Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has argued persuasively, there is an element of positivity in the visible world, and in color particularly, that totally eludes the historicity of language, with its protocols of absence and polarity. The color red, as an attribute of the world, is always there. It is something other than the absence of yellow and blue--and, thus, when that red becomes less red, it becomes more one or the other. It never exists in a linguistic condition of degradation or excess that must necessarily derive from our expectations.

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.

As the familiar quote usually attributed to Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis goes, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

Furthermore, some 52 studies—all available on NIH’s website—find that ordinary masking (using less than an N95 respirator) doesn’t reduce viral infection rates, even—surprisingly—in institutional settings like hospitals and surgical theaters.6,7 Moreover, some 25 additional studies attribute to masking a grim retinue of harms, including respiratory and immune system illnesses, as well as dermatological, dental, gastrointestinal, and psychological injuries.

Without personal commitment to the attributes of fair play and integrity, the United States is in grave danger. Malice and intolerance stalk our society, staking claim to our minds, and not one corner of our social order is unaffected. This darkness is a significant threat to our national good, perhaps the most significant threat in our history, for it strikes at the heart of democracy. Where people are not free to disagree, there can be no democracy, since that is what democracy is.

Leading doctors and scientists, including some of the nation’s most highly published and experienced physicians and front-line COVID specialists like McCullough, Kory, Ryan Cole, David Brownstein, and Risch believe that Dr. Fauci’s suppression of early treatment and off-patent remedies was responsible for up to 80 percent of the deaths attributed to COVID.

Like most of the left’s leaders, I was a Marxist and a socialist. I believed in the “dialectic” of history and therefore, even though I knew that the societies calling themselves Marxist were ruled by ruthless dictatorships, I believed they would soon evolve into socialist democracies. I attributed their negative features to under-development and to the capitalist pasts from which they had emerged.

This isn’t some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream. We can’t trust the evening news. We can’t trust our politicians. Our universities, the gateway to a better life, are rigged against us. We can’t get jobs. You can’t believe these things and participate meaningfully in society. Social psychologists have shown that group belief is a powerful motivator in performance. When groups perceive that it’s in their interest to work hard and achieve things, members of that group outperform other similarly situated individuals. It’s obvious why: If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it’s hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. Here is where the rhetoric of modern conservatives (and I say this as one of them) fails to meet the real challenges of their biggest constituents. Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers. I have watched some friends blossom into successful adults and others fall victim to the worst of Middletown’s temptations—premature parenthood, drugs, incarceration. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault. My dad, for example, has never disparaged hard work, but he mistrusts some of the most obvious paths to upward mobility. When

Federal law requires that every injury or death following vaccination during clinical trials—or, by logical extension, with emergency use products—must be attributed to the vaccine unless proven otherwise. Nevertheless, as of August 2021, the CDC officially took the Pollyannaish view that not one of the 13,000-plus deaths162 reported to VAERS following vaccination as of August 20, 2021, was vaccine related.163 Not one. As was the case with Hank Aaron, CDC apparently did nothing to actively investigate any of those deaths, exonerating the vaccines, instead, by fiat.

The affirmation that Indian democracy would be founded entirely on a shared citizenship centered on upholding liberal principles and participatory institutions rather than religion, race, or ethnicity ensured that the many particularities that might have otherwise divided India were in one fell swoop deprived of any fundamental political meaning. This did not imply that the particularities themselves ceased to exist or that they ceased to provoke contention. Rather, they simply ceased to be privileged attributes that endowed their possessors with either greater rights or natural claims on power.

On average, the real incomes of middle-class families have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans, while the real incomes of working poor families have grown six times as fast under Democrats as they have under Republicans. These substantial partisan differences persist even after allowing for differences in economic circumstances and historical trends beyond the control of individual presidents. They suggest that escalating inequality is not simply an inevitable economic trend—and that a great deal of economic inequality in the contemporary United States is specifically attributable to the policies and priorities of Republican presidents.

Against this backdrop, the celebration that erupted among many—including me—when the Cold War reached its end has dissipated. In 2017, The Economist’s Democracy Index showed a decline in democratic health in seventy countries, using such criteria as respect for due process, religious liberty, and the space given to civil society. Among the nations scoring less well was the United States, which for the first time was rated a “flawed democracy,” not a “full” one. The analysts didn’t blame Donald Trump for this fall from grace but rather attributed his election to Americans’ loss of confidence in their institutions. “Popular trust in government, elected representatives, and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels,” the report concluded, adding, “This has been a long-term trend.” The number of Americans who say that they have faith in their government “just about always” or “most of the time” dropped from above 70 percent in the early 1960s to below 20 percent in 2016. Yes, there continue to be gains. In Africa, forty heads of state have relinquished power voluntarily in the past quarter century, compared with a mere handful in the three decades prior to that. However, progress there and in a select number of other countries has failed to obscure a more general leveling-off. Today, about half the nations on earth can be considered democracies—flawed or otherwise—while the remaining 50 percent tend toward authoritarianism.

...for Fascism to extend its reach from the streets to the high offices of state, it must secure backing from multiple sectors of society. This insight has value today because of the growing tendency in the media to portray Fascism as a logical outgrowth of populism and to attribute both allegiances to an unhappy lower middle class, as if anti-democratic sentiments were the exclusive property of one economic tier. They’re not, and there is nothing inherently biased or intolerant about being a populist, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people.” Were I to be given the choice of sitting inside or outside that large circle of believers, my response would be, “Include me in.

Christians like yourself invariably declare that monsters like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung spring from the womb of atheism. ... The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths. Most become the center of a quasi-religious personality cult, requiring the continual use of propaganda for its maintenance. There is a difference between propaganda and the honest dissemination of information that we (generally) expect from a liberal democracy. ... Consider the Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi death camps was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, its roots were religious, and the explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued throughout the period. The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914. And both Catholic and Protestant churches have a shameful record of complicity with the Nazi genocide. Auschwitz, the Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia are not examples of what happens to people when they become too reasonable. To the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of political and racial dogmatism. It is time that Christians like yourself stop pretending that a rational rejection of your faith entails the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. One need not accept anything on insufficient evidence to find the virgin birth of Jesus to be a preposterous idea. The problem with religion—as with Nazism, Stalinism, or any other totalitarian mythology—is the problem of dogma itself. I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID. “The strategy from the outset should have been implementing protocols to stop hospitalizations through early treatment of Americans who tested positive for COVID but were still asymptomatic. If we had done that, we could have pushed case fatality rates below those we see with seasonal flu, and ended the bottlenecks in our hospitals. We should have rapidly deployed off-the-shelf medications with proven safety records and subjected them to rigorous risk/benefit decision-making,” McCullough continues. “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.

McCullough observes that, “We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID. “The strategy from the outset should have been implementing protocols to stop hospitalizations through early treatment of Americans who tested positive for COVID but were still asymptomatic. If we had done that, we could have pushed case fatality rates below those we see with seasonal flu, and ended the bottlenecks in our hospitals. We should have rapidly deployed off-the-shelf medications with proven safety records and subjected them to rigorous risk/benefit decision-making,” McCullough continues. “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.

Aristotle, who lived after the downfall of Sparta, gives a very hostile account of its constitution.5 What he says is so different from what other people say that it is difficult to believe he is speaking of the same place, e.g. 'The legislator wanted to make the whole State hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of men, but he has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury. The consequence is that in such a State wealth is too highly valued, especially if the citizens fall under the dominion of their wives, after the manner of most warlike races…. Even in regard to courage, which is of no use in daily life, and is needed only in war, the influence of the Lacedaemonian women has been most mischievous…. This license of the Lacedaemonian women existed from the earliest times, and was only what might be expected. For ... when Lycurgus, as tradition says, wanted to bring the women under his laws, they resisted, and he gave up the attempt.' He goes on to accuse Spartans of avarice, which he attributes to the unequal distribution of property. Although lots cannot be sold, he says, they can be given or bequeathed. Two-fifths of all the land, he adds, belongs to women. The consequence is a great diminution in the number of citizens: it is said that once there were ten thousand, but at the time of the defeat by Thebes there were less than one thousand. Aristotle criticizes every point of the Spartan constitution. He says that the ephors are often very poor, and therefore easy to bribe; and their power is so great that even kings are compelled to court them, so that the constitution has been turned into a democracy. The ephors, we are told, have too much licence, and live in a manner contrary to the spirit of the constitution, while the strictness in relation to ordinary citizens is so intolerable that they take refuge in the secret illegal indulgence of sensual pleasures.

Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail, the weight of the detail—the rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that’ll be packed on your grave when you’re dead. Perhaps by definition a neighborhood is the place to which a child spontaneously gives undivided attention; that’s the unfiltered way meaning comes to children, just flowing off the surface of things. Nonetheless, fifty years later, I ask you: has the immersion ever again been so complete as it was in those streets, where every block, every backyard, every house, every floor of every house—the walls, ceilings, doors, and windows of every last friend’s family apartment—came to be so absolutely individualized? Were we ever again to be such keen recording instruments of the microscopic surface of things close at hand, of the minutest gradations of social position conveyed by linoleum and oilcloth, by yahrzeit candles and cooking smells, by Ronson table lighters and Venetian blinds? About one another, we knew who had what kind of lunch in the bag in his locker and who ordered what on his hot dog at Syd’s; we knew one another’s every physical attribute—who walked pigeon-toed and who had breasts, who smelled of hair oil and who oversalivated when he spoke; we knew who among us was belligerent and who was friendly, who was smart and who was dumb; we knew whose mother had the accent and whose father had the mustache, whose mother worked and whose father was dead; somehow we even dimly grasped how every family’s different set of circumstances set each family a distinctive difficult human problem. And, of course, there was the mandatory turbulence born of need, appetite, fantasy, longing, and the fear of disgrace. With only adolescent introspection to light the way, each of us, hopelessly pubescent, alone and in secret, attempted to regulate it—and in an era when chastity was still ascendant, a national cause to be embraced by the young like freedom and democracy. It’s astonishing that everything so immediately visible in our lives as classmates we still remember so precisely. The intensity of feeling that we have seeing one another today is also astonishing. But most astonishing is that we are nearing the age that our grandparents were when we first went off to be freshmen at the annex on February 1, 1946. What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened. That the results are in for the class of January 1950—the unanswerable questions answered, the future revealed—is that not astonishing? To have lived—and in this country, and in our time, and as who we were. Astonishing.

Director Hathaway is the leader of the Accountants, the armed resistance movement fighting the totalitarian regime currently in control of England. The Accountants were named to reflect the fact that their written charter is to bring the coalition government to account for their crimes against the peoples of the British Isles.  “In spite of his lack of any formal military training, Hathaway is credited with being a brilliant natural tactician. Much of his success as a commander has been attributed to his ability to unite the previously divided factions of the resistance behind the central ideas of returning democracy and social equality to Britain, whilst

With over 5,000 years of continuous history, the subcontinent known as India has flourished. Its culture, people, and history have added a crucial, colorful chapter to the history of humankind as a whole. India has participated in many events that shaped the progress and future of mankind, and its art, philosophy, literature, and culture have influenced billions. From the culture's inception in the Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization, the people of the Indian subcontinent have acted as the fulcrum between the east and west. Their civilization once flourished as a trading titan and provided the ancient world with a rich and varied society, unlike its contemporaries it did so without succumbing to the horrors of war. This tradition of economic and philosophic focus would be transmitted throughout the ages through each of the different eras in Indian history. In the ancient world, the Indus Valley civilization provided the backbone of what would become Indian culture. As the society eventually collapsed, it left behind traces of its existence to be found and adopted by the Vedic peoples that sprung from their demise. In the Vedic period, Indian culture and history were shaped and transformed into literary masterpieces that survive today as a lynchpin of Hindu philosophy. It also saw the birth of Buddhism, the ascension of the Buddha and the spread of a counter culture that has expanded far across the globe, influencing the lives of millions. This very formative era in Indian history gives modern-day society an idea of what the structure of Indian history and society would become. This feudal period in India was one of ideological development in both the Vedic or Hindu ways and the ways of the Sramana traditions that arose as a countercultural movement. These two ideologies would go on to influence the various empires that would begin to form after the Vedic Age. In the Age of Empires, the Indian subcontinent would witness the birth of empires like that of Cyrus the Great in Persia and Alexander the Great of Macedonia. The disunity of the Indian kingdoms would allow foreign invaders to influence this era, but although the smaller Indian kingdoms were defeated in many ways, India remained unconquered as a whole. From this disunity and vulnerability, the first Indian empires would begin taking shape. From the Mauryan to the Gupta and beyond, the first Indian empires would shape the history of India in ways that are hard to fathom. Science, mathematics, art, architecture, and literature would flourish in this age. This period would provide India with a national identity that hangs on to this day. In the Age of Muslim Expansion, India was introduced to yet another vital part of its history and culture. Though many wars were fought between the Indian kingdoms and the Muslim sultanates, the people of the Indian subcontinent adopted an attitude of religious tolerance that persists to this day. In modern-day India, you can see the influence of the Muslim cultures that put down roots in India during this time, most notably in the Taj Mahal. In the Age of Exploration, the expansion of European power across the globe would shape the history of India under the Portuguese, Dutch, and eventually the British. This period, although known for exploitation, can also be attributed with the birth of Indian democracy and republican values that we would see born in the modern age. Though the modern age is but a minuscule fraction of the gravitas of Indian history, it maintains itself as a colorful portrait of the Indian soul. If one truly wants to understand Indian history, one but has to look at the astounding culture of modern-day India. The 50 events chosen to be illustrated in this book are but a few of the thousands if not millions of crucial events that shaped and built the extravagance of the country we now call India.

they mainly attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to the separation of church and state.

Many of the failures attributed to democracy are in fact failures of state administrations that are unable to deliver on the promises made by newly elected democratic politicians to voters who want not just their political rights but good government as well.

In the midst of a pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths attributed to COVID, and the economy in free fall, Dr. Fauci’s suggestion that we withhold promising treatments that have an established safety profile—from patients who have a potentially lethal disease—pending the completion of randomized controlled clinical trials, is highly manipulative and utterly unethical. It is not medically ethical to allow a COVID-19 patient to deteriorate in the early stages of the infection when there is an inexpensive, safe, and demonstrably effective HCQ treatment that CDC’s and NIAID’s own studies show blocks coronavirus replication. It would be equally unethical to enroll sick individuals in such studies—as Dr. Fauci proposes—in which half the infected patients would receive a placebo.

His bizarre and inexplicable actions give credence to the suspicions held by many Americans that Dr. Fauci is working to prolong the epidemic in order to impose expensive patented drugs and vaccines on a captive population, during a pandemic that has crashed the world economy, caused famines, and destroyed lives. While Dr. Fauci held us hostage waiting for what turned out to be imperfect vaccines, his own agency attributed over half a million deaths in America to COVID.

What constitutes a brand? There are several aspects. First, it is a promise, or at least a belief. Customers cannot test every product that they buy, so they draw on their own past experience or on the recommendations of others. Through consistent and reliable experience achieved over a long period of time, trust in the promise is created. Trust reduces complexity and shortens buyers’ deci[1]sions. Often decisions are based not on specific attributes but on the holistic emotions that a product engenders. Young men do not buy expensive Swiss watches because they tell the time better, but because they appeal to their aspi[1]rations. A brand must differentiate itself against the plethora of so-called ‘me too’ alternatives. Against these measures, ‘Swissness’ has become a brand in its own right – and this may be the country’s most precious and enduring comparative advantage.

Justice can be attributed to ability or what an individual deserves. True equality must go beyond capabilities and serve all citizens equally, regardless of background, gender and colour.

As America’s COVID czar, Dr. Fauci never complained about CDC’s decision to skip autopsies from deaths attributed to vaccines. This practice allowed CDC to persistently claim that all deaths following vaccination were “unrelated to vaccination.” CDC

But the fact is that Soros-backed projects share basic common attributes…. They all work to weaken the ability of national and local authorities in Western democracies to uphold the laws and values of their nations and communities. … In other words, their goal is to subvert Western democracies and make it impossible for governments to maintain order or for societies to retain their unique identities and values. … The notion at the heart of the push for the legalization of unfettered immigration is that states should not be able to protect their national identities. … Parallel to these efforts are others geared toward rejecting the right of Western democracies to uphold long-held social norms. Soros-supported groups, for instance, stand behind the push not only for gay marriage but for unisex public bathrooms. … the peoples of the West need to recognize the common foundations of all Soros’s actions. They need to realize as well that the only response to these premeditated campaigns of subversion is for the people of the West to stand up for their national rights and their individual right to security. They must stand with the national institutions that guarantee that security, in accordance with the rule of the law, and uphold and defend their national values and traditions.96

In 1983, Michael W. Doyle commented on the common observation that democracies almost never wage war on one another. Understanding the reasons for this phenomenon may be crucial to our hopes for preventing devastating conflict in the next generation. Which attributes of democracy foster this essential trait of mutual nonaggression?

While conventionally we think of institutionalization as a response to interdependence, here we emphasize that it is also a cause. A relatively stable, peaceful, liberal global order facilitated the radical economic globalization of the postwar era, creating an unprecedented degree of interdependence, partially endogenous to the process of cooperation itself. Though this increase in economic interdependence over time was foreseen and desired by the institutional architects of the 1940s, they could not have imagined how deeply it would alter the world, especially in two unforeseeable ways. First, interdependence spread far beyond its original nexus among the advanced industrial democracies to encompass almost the entire world. Second, previously “domestic” issues like the environment, health, or policing increasingly spilled across borders, acquiring the attributes of interdependence. Indeed, interdependence has grown so pervasive that it has outstripped the traditional mechanism through which governance was “supplied” – state bargaining over institutionalized cooperation. This creates gridlock.

The definitional attributes of the far-right relate to enduring political and ideological qualities as well as those social layers produced by capitalist development most drawn to the far-right style of politics. The key appeal is to ‘the people’, understood as a racially-defined demos, premised on a gendered social hierarchy and obscuring the class cleavages associated with capitalist development. This is significant as it reflects an acceptance, indeed, an embrace of the possibilities of mass-democracy and particularly through the way in which this political form enables a censoring of elites, whether traditional, liberal-cosmopolitan or otherwise. 4 Further, in appealing to a people through language and symbols that both reify and fetishize particular qualities and attributes associated with the cultural identity of ‘the people’, the far-right not only articulates those values and institutions that it sees as key to the identity of a people (e.g. race/ethnicity, culture rooted in fixed narratives and symbols, history, masculinity, etc.), but also seeks to erase and obscure those other qualities – notably the socio-economic – that are, arguably, central to the material and lived reality of concrete individuals within capitalist societies.

Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers.' Huntington concludes (regretfully) this was no longer possible by the late sixties. Why not? Presidential authority was eroded. There was a broad reappraisal of governmental action and 'morality' in the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate era among political leaders who, like the general public, openly questioned 'the legitimacy of hierarchy, coercion, discipline, secrecy, and deception—all of which are, in some measure,' according to Huntington, 'inescapable attributes of the process of government.' Congressional power became more decentralized and party allegiances to the administration weakened. Traditional forms of public and private authority were undermined as 'people no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents.' ¶ Throughout the sixties and into the seventies, too many people participated too much: 'Previously passive or unorganized groups in the population, blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women now embarked on concerted efforts to establish their claims to opportunities, positions, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled [sic] before. [Italics mine.] ¶ Against their will, these 'groups'—the majority of the population—have been denied 'opportunities, positions, rewards and privileges.' More democracy is not the answer: 'applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames.' Huntington concludes that 'some of the problems in governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy...Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.' ¶ '...The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. In the past, every democratic society has had a marginal population, of greater or lesser size, which has not actively participated in politics. In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic but it is also one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively. [Italics mine.]' ¶ With a candor which has shocked those trilateralists who are more accustomed to espousing the type of 'symbolic populism' Carter employed so effectively in his campaign, the Governability Report expressed the open secret that effective capitalist democracy is limited democracy! (See Alan Wolfe, 'Capitalism Shows Its Face.')

But Amazon is not alone in its avoidance of taxes. Bloomberg Businessweek reports, “The tactics of Google and Facebook depend on ‘transfer pricing,’ paper transactions among corporate subsidiaries that allow for allocating income to tax havens while attributing expenses to higher-tax countries. Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue, according to Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.” At a time when both local and federal governments are putting off needed infrastructure improvements because of tax revenue shortfalls, the tax avoidance schemes of our richest technology companies are partially to blame.

this has been YouTube’s strategy: pretend not to know there is infringing material being uploaded by users and take down the content when notified by the copyright owner. But this of course neglects one crucial provision of the DMCA—does YouTube receive financial benefit directly attributable to the presence of infringing content on the site? The answer, of course, is yes: in fact you could argue that YouTube achieved success in a crowded field precisely because of its laxity toward pirated content. Competitors such as Yahoo and RealNetworks were thinking they were in a boxing match, where there were rules, while YouTube was performing in a professional wrestling match, where there are no rules.

In the succeeding thirty-two years of U.S. guidance, not only has Guatemala gradually become a terrorist state rarely matched in the scale of systematic murder of civilians, but its terrorist proclivities have increased markedly at strategic moments of escalated U.S. intervention. The first point was the invasion and counterrevolution of 1954, which reintroduced political murder and large-scale repression to Guatemala following the decade of democracy. The second followed the emergence of a small guerrilla movement in the early 1960s, when the United States began serious counterinsurgency (CI) training of the Guatemalan army. In 1966, a further small guerrilla movement brought the Green Berets and a major CI war in which 10,000 people were killed in pursuit of three or four hundred guerrillas. It was at this point that the "death squads" and "disappearances" made their appearance in Guatemala. The United States brought in police training in the 1970s, which was followed by the further institutionalization of violence. The "solution" to social problems in Guatemala, specifically attributable to the 1954 intervention and the form of U.S. assistance since that time, has been permanent state terror. With Guatemala, the United States invented the "counterinsurgency state.

Similarly, a comprehensive 1977 study by McKinlay and McKinlay, formerly required reading in almost all American medical schools, found that all medical interventions, including vaccines, surgeries, and antibiotics, contributed only about 1 percent of the decline and at most 3.5 percent.17 Both CDC and the McKinlays attributed the disappearance of infectious disease mortalities not to doctors and health officials, but to improved nutrition and sanitation—the latter credited to strict regulation of food preparation, electric refrigerators, sewage treatment, and chlorinated water. The McKinlays joined Harvard’s iconic infectious disease pioneer, Edward Kass, in warning that a self-serving medical cartel would one day try to claim credit for these public health improvements as a pretense for imposing unwarranted medical interventions (e.g., vaccines) on the American public. As the McKinlays and Kass18 had predicted, vaccinologists successfully hijacked the astonishing success story—the dramatic 74 percent decline in infectious disease mortalities of the first half of the twentieth century—and deployed it to claim for themselves, and particularly for vaccines, a revered and sanctified—and scientifically undeserving—prestige beyond criticism, questioning, or debate.

Furthermore, some 52 studies—all available on NIH’s website—find that ordinary masking (using less than an N95 respirator) doesn’t reduce viral infection rates, even—surprisingly—in institutional settings like hospitals and surgical theaters.6,7 Moreover, some 25 additional studies attribute to masking a grim retinue of harms, including respiratory and immune system illnesses, as well as dermatological, dental, gastrointestinal, and psychological injuries.8 Fourteen of these studies are randomized, peer-reviewed placebo studies. There is no well-constructed study that persuasively suggests masks have convincing efficacy against COVID-19 that would justify accepting the harms associated with masks. Finally, retrospective studies on Dr. Fauci’s mask mandates confirm that they were bootless. “Regional analysis in the United States does not show that [mask] mandates had any effect on case rates, despite 93 percent compliance. Moreover, according to CDC data, 85 percent of people who contracted COVID-19 reported wearing a mask,”9 according to Gutentag.

McCullough observes that, “We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID.

Similarly, a September 2021 analysis by a team of prominent scientists and mathematicians convened by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch—of half a dozen population and surveillance system databases, including VAERS—using eight different independent methods, attributes 150,000 deaths to COVID vaccines in the United States since January 2020. Kirsch has offered a million-dollar reward for anyone who finds an error in this calculation.

In a democracy, you cannot blame only a leading leader but also the entire leadership, including the voters’ choice, if the party fails to fulfill its promises. Prose, whether in the form of a quotation or something else, expresses various colours of character and life in its context and accurately mirrors society; therefore, read not only the content of the writing but also understand and share what you think will enlighten others’ lives. What are the attributes of a leader? When the nation understands and realizes that, it blocks the route for the leadership, with the foresight, upon dishonest, rude, and immoral ones. Otherwise, the rope of idiocy remains in the hands of idiots. The day you vote is an opportunity to vote not for a leader but for a party manifesto and constructive thoughts and plans. Indeed, you will have good fortune, a bright and joyful social status, and prosperity will always be a part of your society and life. You are the real leader of the universe if you also lead the hearts and not just the minds. The mind keeps the knowledge while the heart showers the fragrance of love towards the soul; it is the base and circle of the knowledge. A leader doesn’t mean to have governmental power; it means to lead its people on the right, secure, equal, fair, and visionary way of life. Be a leader, not a lawyer and judge, not an official; express party program(me) honestly for the nation and face all the challenges before accusing, abusing, and blaming others. Indeed, it shows dignity and venerable leadership. The opposition leaders and those in power can keep reputable the four pillars of democracy in the context of constitutional duties, transparent justice, truth, and honesty; they can also discredit those by their wrong character and fallacious decisions and deeds. Real and true leader neither has a special status nor contradict others. If he keeps the distance in any way or shape If he says things that don’t exist If he brings you in a destructive direction If he what promises, but do not keep his words If he put you naked in the open sky and himself in a comfortable tent If he gives you false hopes rather than the practical helping He is just an opportunist, a cheater, and a liar but not a leader. Promises of the leader before the election build expectations in the minds of voters, and after winning the election, those cause humiliation in the eyes of voters if the leader fails to fulfill them. Therefore, fly not so high that you cannot land easily; be honest with yourself. Political leadership is a significant spirit and defense of the armed forces of any state, whereas the armed forces are a protective shield for them. Both are compulsory for each other, as the political leadership has one point, and the armed forces have zero points, which becomes ten points. Otherwise, it stays one or zero, establishing nothing. A selfish and empty of vision and solution leadership prefers its own political and personal benefits and interests instead of its people; indeed, it collapses in the face of ruffians and traitors of the constitution. As a reality, such a state and all institutions face conspiracies in global affairs; consequently, diplomatic isolation and trade failure become destiny; it leads towards destruction with self-adopted strategy and character.

Molecular biologist Harvey Bialy, the editor of the Nature Biotechnology journal, observed that the subtle backdrop of racial and sexual bigotry and bullying are the distinguishing attributes of AIDS research:

Dr. Lawrie called out the corruption of modern medicine by Big Pharma and other interests and attributed the barbaric suppression of IVM to the single-minded obsession with more profitable vaccines.

CDC’s decision to skip autopsies from deaths attributed to vaccines. This practice allowed CDC to persistently claim that all deaths following vaccination were “unrelated to vaccination.” CDC also refused to conduct follow-up medical inquiries among people claiming vaccine injuries

Dr. Fauci’s suppression of early treatment and off-patent remedies was responsible for up to 80 percent of the deaths attributed to COVID. All five doctors independently told me the same thing. The relentless malpractice of deliberately withholding early effective COVID treatments, of forcing the use of toxic remdesivir, may have unnecessarily killed up to 500,000 Americans in hospitals.

Bialy told Celia Farber that Gallo, Dr. Fauci, and the thousands of researchers that Dr. Fauci funded to develop ways to kill HIV have never explained how Montagnier’s virus could possibly be responsible for all the harms and diseases attributed to it: “It would have been the major single explanation that [Gallo’s] hypothesis would have had to provide in order to be taken seriously.

The headline of a comprehensive exposé in The Guardian expressed the global shock among the scientific community at the rank corruption by scientific publishing’s most formidable pillars: “The Lancet has made one of the biggest retractions in modern history. How could this happen?”94 The Guardian writers openly accused The Lancet of promoting fraud: “The sheer number and magnitude of the things that went wrong or missing are too enormous to attribute to mere incompetence.” The Guardian commented, “What’s incredible is that the editors of these esteemed journals still have a job—that is how utterly incredible the supposed data underlying the studies was.” The capacity of their Pharma overlords to strong-arm the world’s top two medical journals, the NEJM and The Lancet, into condoning deadly research95,96 and to simultaneously publish blatantly fraudulent articles in the middle of a pandemic, attests to the cartel’s breathtaking power and ruthlessness. It is no longer controversial to acknowledge that drug makers rigorously control medical publishing and that The Lancet, NEJM, and JAMA are utterly corrupted instruments of Pharma. The Lancet editor, Richard Horton, confirms, “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”97 Dr. Marcia Angell, who served as an NEJM editor for 20 years, says journals are “primarily a marketing machine.”98 Pharma, she says, has co-opted “every institution that might stand in its way.”99,100 Cracking Down on HCQ to Keep Case Fatalities High Referring to the Lancet Surgisphere study during a May 27 CNN interview, Dr. Fauci stated on CNN about hydroxychloroquine,

Regulators misused PCR tests that CDC belatedly admitted in August 2021 were incapable of distinguishing COVID from other viral illnesses. Dr. Fauci tolerated their use at inappropriately high amplitudes of 37 and up to 45, even though Fauci had told Vince Racaniello that tests employing cycle thresholds of 35 and above were very unlikely to indicate the presence of live virus that could replicate.25 In July 2020, Fauci remarked that at these levels, a positive result is “just dead nucleotides, period,”26 yet did nothing to modify testing so it might be more accurate. As America’s COVID czar, Dr. Fauci never complained about CDC’s decision to skip autopsies from deaths attributed to vaccines. This practice allowed CDC to persistently claim that all deaths following vaccination were “unrelated to vaccination.

Similarly, a comprehensive 1977 study by McKinlay and McKinlay, formerly required reading in almost all American medical schools, found that all medical interventions, including vaccines, surgeries, and antibiotics, contributed only about 1 percent of the decline and at most 3.5 percent.17 Both CDC and the McKinlays attributed the disappearance of infectious disease mortalities not to doctors and health officials, but to improved nutrition and sanitation—the latter credited to strict regulation of food preparation, electric refrigerators, sewage treatment, and chlorinated water. The McKinlays joined Harvard’s iconic infectious disease pioneer, Edward Kass, in warning that a self-serving medical cartel would one day try to claim credit for these public health improvements as a pretense for imposing unwarranted medical interventions (e.g., vaccines) on the American public.

Brownstein, and Risch believe that Dr. Fauci’s suppression of early treatment and off-patent remedies was responsible for up to 80 percent of the deaths attributed to COVID. All five doctors independently told me the same thing. The relentless malpractice of deliberately withholding early effective COVID treatments, of forcing the use of toxic remdesivir, may have unnecessarily killed up to 500,000 Americans in hospitals.

As America’s COVID czar, Dr. Fauci never complained about CDC’s decision to skip autopsies from deaths attributed to vaccines. This practice allowed CDC to persistently claim that all deaths following vaccination were “unrelated to vaccination.

the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which Bill Clinton had signed into law just weeks after Google went live on the Web. The statute protected online service providers (OSPs) such as Google and YouTube from copyright infringement prosecution provided that the OSP not have the requisite level of knowledge of the infringing activity… not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity [and] upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement… expeditiously take down or block access to the material. Since Hurley’s 2005 email, this has been YouTube’s strategy: pretend not to know there is infringing material being uploaded by users and take down the content when notified by the copyright owner. But this of course neglects one crucial provision of the DMCA—does YouTube receive financial benefit directly attributable to the presence of infringing content on the site? The answer, of course, is yes: in fact you could argue that YouTube achieved success in a crowded field precisely because of its laxity toward pirated content.

Although the Democrats’ sins were real, to my distress they were not as numerous and outlandish as the ones coming from my side, and I sometimes felt like I was working with people who, in a phrase often attributed to Mark Twain, “refused to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Earth democracy is living economies.

Everything needs a profound restructuring.

Accept the fact there is a cost. The cost of not changing must be enormous

Climate change is a symptom of our lack of care in handling our relationship with the environment.

Resources should be the entitlement of all of us: health, education, housing, and the fair distribution of energy sources.

There is a growing gap between short-term gain and profit and long-term consequences.

It's all about measuring innovation and nothing about innovation itself.

Only make clean energy.

Let us create a city where neither the choice of religion nor the accident of colour is an obstacle to opportunity and advancement, not a substitute for effort and ability.

How can we not play their game?

We’re trying to help build a society that needs a lot less and laughs a lot more.

The annual mortalities from so-called AIDS during the early years of the pandemic for 1983–1987—prior to AZT’s approval—were lower, perhaps ten to fifteen thousand people in a country of 250 million.109 It wasn’t until the late 1980s, when Dr. Fauci’s AZT came along, that the number of deaths attributed to AIDS shot up.

The death rate climbed precipitously after the commercial introduction of AZT. In 1987, “AIDS” deaths rose by 46 percent with 16,469 people dying. In 1988, as more and more people received AZT, the death toll rose to 21,176, and then to 27,879 in 1989. Death rates rose to 31,694 in 1990, and 37,040 in 1991.110 At the end of the 1980s, HHS’s standard prescription for AZT was 1,500 mg a day. In 1988, the average survival time for patients taking AZT was four months.111 Even mainstream medicine couldn’t overlook the fact that the administration of higher doses led to much higher death rates.112 At the beginning of the 1990s, health officials lowered the daily dose to 500 mg. The average lifespan of AZT patients rose to twenty-four months in 1997, as deaths attributed to AIDS plummeted. Afterwards. CDC changed its counting metrics to make it difficult to count annual AIDS deaths.113

The “elite” themselves of course don’t believe any such thing, never professing such ideas publicly, nor in private, nor, I would say, is it in their minds, consciously or not, as their true motivation. Their motivation is humanitarian and egalitarian, just as they claim: to temper the excesses of the free market, to protect the weak, the minorities—especially blacks—and the poor from traditional oppressors; to fight everywhere emanations of distinction or “privilege,” to uplift the meek and the weak, to “make the last be the first.” To the extent they appear to be antidemocratic, it is in the name of a purer democracy and a more pure humanitariaism: thus they feel justified in crushing now the Dutch farmers who rise up against “climate restrictions” because they believe by doing so they are helping the far larger masses of poor in the Third World. It’s the same for all their behavior, the promotion of transsexualism, of the gays—it is part of protecting the weak. If they are cruel, authoritarian to some it’s because they believe they’re fighting bullies. If they often engage in corrupt behavior, hypocrisy and so on, well, that’s just human frailty and you can look the other way: “I still think I’m trying to do good, and that’s what matters.” In other words, they’re acting like almost any other ideological mandarin Party incompetent class in history, but, I would say, with less, far less self-conscious cynicism or nihilism than what you’d find among East Bloc apparatchiks. Not one embraces amoralism, Nietzscheanism, eugenicism, or any of the vampiric dark traits attributed to them by their political opponents. They are not gangsters or mad scientists. They are genuine moralists, and without that egalitarian moralism no one would accept their rule and none of their insanity would be possible.

The “elite” themselves of course don’t believe any such thing [amoral aristocratic radicalism], never professing such ideas publicly, nor in private, nor, I would say, is it in their minds, consciously or not, as their true motivation. Their motivation is humanitarian and egalitarian, just as they claim: to temper the excesses of the free market, to protect the weak, the minorities—especially blacks—and the poor from traditional oppressors; to fight everywhere emanations of distinction or “privilege,” to uplift the meek and the weak, to “make the last be the first.” To the extent they appear to be antidemocratic, it is in the name of a purer democracy and a more pure humanitariaism: thus they feel justified in crushing now the Dutch farmers who rise up against “climate restrictions” because they believe by doing so they are helping the far larger masses of poor in the Third World. It’s the same for all their behavior, the promotion of transsexualism, of the gays—it is part of protecting the weak. If they are cruel, authoritarian to some it’s because they believe they’re fighting bullies. If they often engage in corrupt behavior, hypocrisy and so on, well, that’s just human frailty and you can look the other way: “I still think I’m trying to do good, and that’s what matters.” In other words, they’re acting like almost any other ideological mandarin Party incompetent class in history, but, I would say, with less, far less self-conscious cynicism or nihilism than what you’d find among East Bloc apparatchiks. Not one embraces amoralism, Nietzscheanism, eugenicism, or any of the vampiric dark traits attributed to them by their political opponents. They are not gangsters or mad scientists. They are genuine moralists, and without that egalitarian moralism no one would accept their rule and none of their insanity would be possible.

Nennius tells us, what Gildas omits, the name of the British soldier who won the crowning mercy of Mount Badon, and that name takes us out of the mist of dimly remembered history into the daylight of romance. There looms, large, uncertain, dim but glittering, the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Somewhere in the Island a great captain gathered the forces of Roman Britain and fought the barbarian invaders to the death. Around him, around his name and his deeds, shine all that romance and poetry can bestow. Twelve battles, all located in scenes untraceable, with foes unknown, except that they were heathen, are punctiliously set forth in the Latin of Nennius. Other authorities say, “No Arthur; at least, no proof of any Arthur.” It was only when Geoffrey of Monmouth six hundred years later was praising the splendours of feudalism and martial aristocracy that chivalry, honour, the Christian faith, knights in steel and ladies bewitching, are enshrined in a glorious circle lit by victory. Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson. True or false, they have gained an immortal hold upon the thoughts of men. It is difficult to believe it was all an invention of a Welsh writer. If it was he must have been a marvellous inventor. Modern research has not accepted the annihilation of Arthur. Timidly but resolutely the latest and best-informed writers unite to proclaim his reality. They cannot tell when in this dark period he lived, or where he held sway and fought his battles. They are ready to believe however that there was a great British warrior, who kept the light of civilisation burning against all the storms that beat, and that behind his sword there sheltered a faithful following of which the memory did not fail. All four groups of the Celtic tribes which dwelt in the tilted uplands of Britain cheered themselves with the Arthurian legend, and each claimed their own region as the scene of his exploits. From Cornwall to Cumberland a search for Arthur’s realm or sphere has been pursued.The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. One specimen of this method will suffice: "It is reasonably certain that a petty chieftain named Arthur did exist, probably in South Wales. It is possible that he may have held some military command uniting the tribal forces of the Celtic or highland zone or part of it against raiders and invaders (not all of them necessarily Teutonic). It is also possible that he may have engaged in all or some of the battles attributed to him; on the other hand, this attribution may belong to a later date." This is not much to show after so much toil and learning. Nonetheless, to have established a basis of fact for the story of Arthur is a service which should be respected. In this account we prefer to believe that the story with which Geoffrey delighted the fiction-loving Europe of the twelfth century is not all fancy. If we could see exactly what happened we should find ourselves in the presence of a theme as well founded, as inspired, and as inalienable from the inheritance of mankind as the Odyssey or the Old Testament. It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

Politicians talk about democracy and respecting its main attributes, but deep down they still believe that their party is always right.

Political Democracy is a term which is by default a paradox and thus!, a nonentity!..For the Democratic construct, reflects the cultural norms of a specific form or type of social order, and in consequence, renders Democracies, to be highly inclusive associations which are thus!, inherently cultural expressions and not!, political proclivities!... Hence why it is imperative that before the Democratic construct can be implemented or adapted within or by a society. The society in question must first harbor certain specific cultural and thus social attributes which are Democratically compatible or compliant...Alas!, why certain cultures and societies throughout the course of history..Have not never either aspired to Democratic movements or are they today susceptible to the adaptation and integration of the Democratic propriety!".

Thus the diffuse character attributed to terrorism is reproduced in an enveloping atmosphere whose effect is to arouse a primal fear about the precariousness of every moment in daily life, to surround the most taken-for-granted routines with uncertainty.

Does innocence mean not being implicated in wrongdoing such as torture of prisoners or the “collateral damage” to hapless civilians? And is it that the citizens are innocent but not their leaders? If that is the case, isn’t the system closer to the dictatorships whose horrendous crimes were attributed solely, or overwhelmingly, to the leadership and not to the followers?

In the eyes of contemporary observers, such as Thucydides, as well as later historians, the advancement of Athenian hegemony depended upon a public-spirited, able elite at the helm and a demos willing to accept leadership. Conversely, the downfall of Athens was attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for ill-conceived adventures.

Rather than a purely economic system supplying “goods and services,” capital acquired political attributes. Faced with that reality, the magic realists, in desperation, would introduce their trump card, the threat of revolution. This meant arousing the dependents, organizing their numbers, and confronting the realists with their worst nightmare—instability, uncertainty, and, worst of all, the subordination of economic to demotic power

Once Trump had won, a panicked punditburo swung into action, insisting in a crescendo of consensus that trade had little to do with the country’s deindustrialization; that it was pretty much all due to technological factors; that what happened to manufacturing workers was therefore unavoidable. After the dust had settled, many commentators changed their mind on this question, quietly acknowledging the disastrous consequences of ill-crafted trade deals. But what matters for our purposes is the initial reaction, which was virtually unanimous and unfolded along the same lines as in 1896: the rationality of working-class grievances had to be denied.12 The outcome of the 2016 election, the same punditburo insisted, could not and must not be explained by reference to economic factors or to long-term, class-related trends. Yes, lots of Trump voters said they were motivated by economic concerns; yes, Trump talked about economic issues all the time; and yes, the economic stagnation of Trump-voting areas is obvious to anyone who has gone there. And also: every time our post-partisan liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were attributable to their poor education … every time they did this and then thought to themselves, “They have nowhere else to go” … they made the Trump disaster a little more likely. But to acknowledge those plain facts was to come dangerously close to voicing the intolerable heresy that the D.C. opinion cartel dubbed the “economic anxiety” thesis—the idea that people voted for Trump out of understandable worries about wages or opioids or unemployment or deindustrialization. The reason this was intolerable, one suspects, is because it suggested that there was a rational element to certain groups’ support for Trump and also that there was something less than A+ about the professional-class Camelot over which the Democrats presided for eight years.

The term “signaling” here thus refers to indirect provision of information – in the present case, the government’s strength – through the government’s act of doing the propaganda, rather than its usual meaning in everyday language, i.e., direct provision of information as contained in what the government is saying in the propaganda. Such indirect provision of information is possible because propaganda is costly, particularly at the scale implemented by authoritarian states like China, and therefore the willingness and/or ability to undertake such costly actions constitute a credible signal of the government’s capacity and resources. An analogy can be found in the literature on political campaigns and advertising in democracies, which can be expensive but sometimes contain little new information to voters. By “burning money” publicly, however, such campaigns and advertising can signal some otherwise non-verifiable attributes of the candidates.

Both CDC and the McKinlays attributed the disappearance of infectious disease mortalities not to doctors and health officials, but to improved nutrition and sanitation—the latter credited to strict regulation of food preparation, electric refrigerators, sewage treatment, and chlorinated water.

According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, there have been 7,537 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis reported following COVID vaccines,85 with 5,602 cases attributed to Pfizer.86 Some 476 of these reports occurred in children from 12 to 17 years old.