{"id":274304,"date":"2023-10-10T05:28:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T05:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274304"},"modified":"2023-10-12T06:51:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T06:51:58","slug":"this-week-in-the-new-normal-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274304","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the New Normal #74"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Off-Guardian \u2013 Oct 8, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><strong>Our successor to <em>This Week in the Guardian<\/em>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/category\/this-week-in-the-new-normal\/\">This Week in the New Normal<\/a><\/em> is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3><strong>1. The Ministry of Plenty Says Employment is Up<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>A few days ago President Biden (or rather the marketing intern manning his account) tweeted that they had created 300,000 jobs in September:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">September was another good month for American workers, with 336,000 jobs created and inflation coming down.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s nearly 14 million jobs \u2013 including 815,000 in manufacturing \u2013 created under Bidenomics.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; President Biden (@POTUS) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/POTUS\/status\/1710286284864770200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 6, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Now, the math of \u201ccreated jobs\u201d since the pandemic is well known. Essentially, after lockdowns \u201caccidentally\u201d resulted in the firing of hundreds of thousands of people in the name of \u201cpublic health\u201d, the eventual re-hiring of some of those people has been branded \u201cjob creation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But does the claim even have that much reality to its name? It\u2019s just a number, cited by \u201cBiden\u201d, dismantled by Republicans, and debated on Twitter. We\u2019ll never know its veracity or otherwise, it\u2019s impossible to know.<\/p>\n<p>The whole thing reminded me of the description of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abhafoundation.org\/assets\/books\/html\/1984\/28.html#:~:text=A%20great%20deal%20of%20the,given%20as%20sixty%2Dtwo%20millions.\">Ministry of Plenty\u2019s statistics in <em>1984<\/em><\/a>. Orwell predicting the meaninglessness of \u201cofficial statistics\u201d as he did so much else [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<p>Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. <strong>Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.<\/strong> A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the Ministry of Plenty\u2019s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. <strong>Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>2. Re-education camps for Trump voters<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>On Friday Hilary Clinton gave an interview with CNN where she claimed those \u201cMAGA\u201d heads who still support Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/markjoyella\/2023\/10\/06\/hillary-clinton-suggests-formal-deprogramming-for-maga-extremists-who-still-support-trump\/\">should be \u201cdeprogrammed\u201d<\/a>. The republican media picked it and claimed she wanted to send people to re-education camps.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to talk about the specifics but rather make a point about the nature of this kind of media output.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t much care what Clinton says about anything, nobody should really. After all, she\u2019s not seriously suggesting any kind of policy, and will never be in a position to enact or enforce policy again. She\u2019s just saying something divisive and outrageous.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s about polarization. She says something stupid, and the Pavlovian response of the Team Blue Hat is to cheer and clap because they\u2019ve been conditioned to approve of anything they hear from certain people.\u00a0But just as important is the outrage produced in Team Red Hat.<\/p>\n<p>For a while now the news hasn\u2019t even been trying to unify opinion, it\u2019s all about equally dolling out dopamine hits and rage bait tailored to the tastes of the opposing sides.<\/p>\n<p>You are the intended target of news that makes you mad. Angry clicks count as much as happy ones.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>3. Modern Visions of Freedom<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Russia-born pundit Konstantin Kisin went on the BBC this week to debate the meaning of freedom with, among others, Novara media *ahem* \u201cjournalist\u201d Ash Sarkar. You can listen to the whole program here if you\u2019re so inclined, I just want to talk about this clip:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ic5V_Lpzwk8?si=2BrdvCZvViDiXIqo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<p>More specifically, the way Sarkar discusses the concept of freedom, and how terrifying it should be to any rational mind.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially she argues that a starving person is not free. If he is dying he is not free to \u201cbe part of a community\u201d (whatever that means), and therefore those people with food they are not giving him should be compelled to share.<\/p>\n<p>In sum, property rights can and should be curtailed in situations where \u201cprivate property\u201d is somehow infringing other people\u2019s \u201cfreedom\u201d to \u201cparticipate in democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>This argument has been used about free speech <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2016\/05\/26\/the-web-they-want-how-a-twitter-wordsearch-justifies-internet-censorship\/\">for a few years now<\/a>, with social media companies and governments pushing censorship because \u201chate speech\u201d and \u201cabuse\u201d supposedly infringe other people\u2019s right to free speech by intimidating them into silence.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve never seen it applied to property rights before. A potentially concerning trend.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>BONUS: Tragedy of the week<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>An 8-year-old boy, Yonatan Ehrlichman, died in Israel this week after suffering a sudden cardiac arrest in the bathtub.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<div id=\"attachment_274305\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ehrlichman-headline-800x642-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-274305\" class=\"wp-image-274305\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ehrlichman-headline-800x642-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"482\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ehrlichman-headline-800x642-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/ehrlichman-headline-800x642-1-480x385.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 600px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-274305\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontline.news\/post\/tragedy-8-year-old-featured-in-covid-propaganda-video-dies-after-cardiac-arrest\">Frontline News<\/a>, Ehrlichman \u2013 whose father and grandfather are both doctors \u2013 was known as the face of a pro-Covid vaccine propaganda video in Israel.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>It\u2019s not all bad\u2026<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Not a good week, but there\u2019s always this\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;Own Nothing. Be Happy.&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/pwFAl7jPK0\">pic.twitter.com\/pwFAl7jPK0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; David Wolfe (@DavidWolfe) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DavidWolfe\/status\/1707871774405165388?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2023\/10\/08\/this-week-in-the-new-normal-74\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chronicling our progress toward the \u2018great reset\u2019. Includes the sudden death from heart attack of Yonatan Ehrlichman, who became known as the face of a pro-Covid vaccine propaganda video in Israel. He was EIGHT-YEARS-OLD!   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":273448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274307,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274304\/revisions\/274307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/273448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}