That's your evaluation - and mine - but it's not theirs. Believe me, I know the mentality. I spent many years as a federal government bureaucrat, both as a manager & at the Senior Executive Service level. When it came to taking risks, or even doing things differently with no apparent risk, "they" are indeed all of a kind.
Douglas: I keep coming back to your writing because you are a beacon of moral courage in a world that seems to have jettisoned any semblance of a moral compass. I have a deep and visceral fear that all of this will culminate inevitably in paroxysms of blood lust and pure insanity. We are witnessing a slow motion Holocaust and most are stumbling around in stone-stunned indifference. What have we allowed ourselves to become?
On the subject of the amorphous "they", I recall this passage from Hannah Arendt:
“…bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.”
Amen! Thank you for this horrifying new word "safetyism". God bless your writing, and you!
Safetyism is the essence of bureaucracy. You need look no further for their rationale.
But 'they' are being neither rational nor safe. And 'they' are not all of a kind.
That's your evaluation - and mine - but it's not theirs. Believe me, I know the mentality. I spent many years as a federal government bureaucrat, both as a manager & at the Senior Executive Service level. When it came to taking risks, or even doing things differently with no apparent risk, "they" are indeed all of a kind.
Douglas: I keep coming back to your writing because you are a beacon of moral courage in a world that seems to have jettisoned any semblance of a moral compass. I have a deep and visceral fear that all of this will culminate inevitably in paroxysms of blood lust and pure insanity. We are witnessing a slow motion Holocaust and most are stumbling around in stone-stunned indifference. What have we allowed ourselves to become?
On the subject of the amorphous "they", I recall this passage from Hannah Arendt:
“…bureaucracy, or the rule by an intricate system of bureaux in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody. Indeed, if we identify tyranny as the government that is not held to give account of itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done. It is this state of affairs which is among the most potent causes for the current world-wide rebellious unrest.”
Here is Wolff's take on "they", produced in the same month (August 2021) I wrote "The Emerging Nowa Huta" (available here on DBC): https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/uncovering-the-corona-narrative?s=r
speaking of polling: https://dailysceptic.org/2022/03/23/why-are-the-vaccinated-much-more-likely-to-want-america-to-go-to-war-with-russia/