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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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C19 - Catchall term to refer to various covid mitigating restrictions, not the disease.

Anti-lockdown protests spread to Wuhan, China

In Shanghai, protesters called for president Xi Jinping to step down while others cried out “give me liberty or give me death” in the city of Chengdu.

^LOL, I don't know what to say about that. I can only hope they get what they want.

So looks like it's finally happening. It's too much even for the Chinese. Enough to go out and protest. 3 years is the upper limit to how long you can carry on with the C19 fugazi it seems.

For the uninitiated: It's really a different world in China. They are still treating C19 with an "abundance of caution". Probably infinitely more caution than most places in the world right now. Notice how all of the protestors are still wearing masks, outdoors! The sad part is that I could have made this post anytime in the last year and it would have been almost exactly the same.

I think one of the frustrating things about C19 was how much it felt like Groundhog Day, regardless of where you were in the world, outside of the US Red States and certain Balkan states- C19 Policies were kept around for so long past their expiry date, time became a meaningless concept.

I mentioned Groundhog day because I made a post about China's C19 excessiveness 1 year ago back in the old country. And keep in mind most countries got rid of the bulk of their restrictions at the time of making that post. My post was about small protests in various places in China. And in a year they have changed exactly 0%.

Many speculated on the reasons behind China's doggedness. Ranging from covid actually being bad and them knowing about it.. because they made it ha!; to China just not willing to lose face.

Not many of those reasons make sense now. China is not run by idiots. It's clear as the day the rest of the World looks down on them for this at the time of writing this. And covid wasn't that bad. So what gives?

Are they that high on their own supply? I think this is strong evidence that China's national consciousness is not connected to the "Real World" enough to actually be a threat to the US long term; A criticism often levied at The Cathedral. GDP can only save you so much from cutting your own dick off. There is really no kind way to say this, they are living in fantasy land.

It seems like there's a bit of a Gell-Mann amnesia effect with how people treat 'happenings' in foreign countries. COVID protests in US (or Canada); danger to democracy, but also just a bunch of idiots who know nothing. COVID protests in China? That's DEMOCRACY™ in action, the will of the people.

No you see China didn't use Putin's entirely unrelated invasion of Ukraine to sweep its pointless restrictions under the rug like they didn't happen so it's the bad guy because of them, unlike the prudent West and its wise, Scientific™ agenda which ended them exactly at the appropriate time.