Knowwhy

Michael Kuhn – Arguing about theories and political opinions

Corona Virus 4: States and citizens at war with each other and together against a virus

Enforcing aid for the recipients of aid by force against the recipients – only states can do that. And it is this state war program, in the enforcement of which the state actually does many things quite differently with its citizens than it usually does – and yet everything here is somehow the same as always.

It took at most a few hours and fundamental civil rights, with which democratic states differ from dictatorships, as we have always heard, were abolished. From now on, no more. And this, the abolition of these rights of the citizen, which differ from dictatorships because they protect the citizen from the violence of a state, because nobody else has this violence, this abolition of all rights of the citizen was done without the introduction of a dictatorship, without the repeal of any law, but with exactly the same laws, which generously grant these liberties to the citizen, because with the same political sentiment of a generosity of the state monopoly on the use of force, they grant these liberties,  with the same full extent of their power they abolish them when they consider this generous granting of civil liberties to be inappropriate for the state, just as they do abolish tem now, when it suits the state.

And now these freedoms do not suit the state, because that would mean that the citizens themselves would make their own decisions on how best to deal with the threat to their health while pursuing their own life programmes. This is now prohibited. Any weighing up of citizens’ priorities by the citizens is forbidden, the citizen decides nothing, only the priorities set by the state and its priority setting apply, and they apply from now on immediately, and this with complete ruthlessness against any private interests and weighing up. And there is nothing and nothing at all to discuss, these state priorities will be enforced by force with the threat of painful damage, punishment, for the citizen inexorably. That is how politics always works.

The state priority is to keep the society as a whole running, and that means running what the state considers to be a priority. That is first and foremost himself and then the economy, and this means for people they have to keep go working. This is sold with the mendacious argument that the economy provides us all with what we all need. First of all, of course, nobody needs all the stuff that the economy produces; most of the stuff is produced by the economy for the economy itself, and if the economy were to produce at least the food that we actually need for us, then it would simply distribute it to everyone. Of course, this is not possible, because the economy must make a good business. In other words, the economy, also the one that produces the food, produces for its business, and without making a business, as we know, the economy produces nothing at all. And that is as it is: because everyone and everything depends on the economy making  its business, nothing works in this society, then there is  not even anything to eat, so the top political priority of politics is to keep the business  running. Therefore, people keep on working. And in order for that  priority to let people work as usual, all other priorities of citizens are prohibited

And then, because this dependency of citizens on the economy is established as their condition of life, then on top of that, the prohibition of all private decisions of citizens, enforced by state power, and the enforcement of the priorities of the state, prioritizing caring about  the state and the economy, at the expense of the interests of the citizens, this is sold to these citizens as a concern for their living conditions and their health.  And these costs are not peanuts and everybody can already count them, and one may already ask who will bear all these costs for all the money given to the economy and the damages it will have – certainly not the economy, because it has to run, because without it nothing will work. It is, as we are told, our economy that must survive this crisis, and our citizens must pay for it in the interests of their health, with the suspension of their freedoms and with the costs that the crisis is causing them in the future. For the health of the economy, the leaders know a perfect remedy: unlimited credit. 

And if you then ask this question not only who and what actually this economy is, which has to subordinate everything and everything to itself and the state with its monopoly on the use of force ensures that this is done: The economy, that is the 0.1% of the people who own everything, from the factories to the shops to the hospitals, and who use their property of everything and everyone to make more out of all their money, and to make more and more of it, without end; the rest of humanity is taken care of so that this wealth actually grows and grows and grows and grows, and only when these mountains of money grow, do those who work on all this get some of it. That is the whole dependency and for this economic nonsense, to measure all economic activity not by the useful things it produces, but to measure everything and anything by whether it brings more money, for this economic nonsense all states take their people to serve this economy. That is the whole dependence and for this economic nonsense all states take their people into duties for. That’s all what this economy is about and what kind of economy it is that everyone depends on.

So the state, as one can see, has set everything up in such a way that the sate is and remains the ruler over the citizens, come what may, and in normal times as well as in exceptional situations such as the present one, the state takes them under its control and has its laws ready for all these situations. And that includes, as you can see, all the laws that grant the citizen his freedoms when it suits him, as well as switching them off very quickly from one day to the next.

One can see, then, that the big catch with all these freedoms, all these rights granted, is that they are granted, but that the guarantor of these freedoms is the one who always sees a threat to himself in the exercise of this freedoms. That is why he grants them, nothing more. All these freedoms are, as we can see, not at all self-evident, but a well-calculated grace of the political power, calculated according to the priorities of the political power. And according to these criteria of what these granted freedoms mean for this political power, they are granted or, as is the case now, if they do not suit politics, they are switched off without much ado.

And what is granted to you as a right and what the state just switches off, is not just some legal frills, but it is about elementary matters of life: to be allowed to move freely and to speak one’s mind, these are the things that decide what one thinks and does, more precisely what one says to others, what one thinks. You may think a lot, but talking to others about what you think is about the elementary in all social relationships: So allowing to tell others what you think is not just anything.   And without going there where you want to do something, you can’t do a lot of things.

That’s why the prohibition of freedom of movement prohibits nothing more and nothing less than doing what you want to do. And the fact that you can go to work despite the restrictions on freedom of movement says everything about what is important to the state and what is not. 

And not to forget, besides these granted freedoms, there are all kinds of laws for all the other normal everyday things, and this for absolutely everything and anything, that is, nothing that is not regulated by law and with which the state says what is allowed and what is not.

And the fact that now all these freedoms are cancelled now for health-political purposes, this should not mislead that all these now for these health purposes cacelled freedoms could also be more violently switched and enfored on the citizen if it is about other matters than about illness. One should not be blind to not see that all these laws for the more rough cases, are all prepared  in these laws already. The doers of these laws know already now exactly which matters they have in mind which can happen, they know already now all kinds of other possible cases, in which the freedoms are not longer on. And they  even calculate on these cases  so much that they write them already in their laws now, so that when it should be they can pull this, exactly like now, from the drawer and, exactly as now, within the shortest time cancel all the freedoms bring exactly the short action like now with the virus.

Very easily, without any legal problems, fundamental rights of the subjects were abolished by decree in one country, by parliamentary decision in others.  Whatever the case, all dictatorships like China do exactly the same thing as democracies in the West, and the few politicians in command here or there do exactly the same thing everywhere. That is it, all those noble rights that endow the life of citizens with the vaunted freedom of movement are turned off as if with a light switch.

Because, nothing is more absurd for politicians than to trust those citizens who put these politicians to office to do what the politicians tell these citizens to do. That citizens, even when it is nothing but their health that is at stake, would trust the politicians in whom they have – as they say – placed their trust, would trust the views of those politicians they trust and would do what those politicians say, what they should do and not do in order not to fall ill, nothing is more absurd for those politicians than to trust their citizens to do what they tell them to do. Even if politicians, elected by the citizens, that is, democratic politicians appointed in the art of democratic ideas, take care of the health of these citizens, it is the most self-evident for these politicians all over the world – one must be more precise if one ids a politician from the world of this state policy – that the will of politics must always be imposed on these citizens by order and by force and with the threat of punishment.  In the war against a virus, in the fight for health, the citizen is treated as if he were the enemy to be fought.

And that is then again exactly the same as it always is. Even when all these civil rights apply again according to the needs of political power, when people are allowed to do again what has just been forbidden, the relationship between politics and citizens is always exactly the same: the citizen has nothing to say to the first, he may have his opinion on everything (but watch out here too), he has nothing to decide, zero, that is what politics does.   Politics not only has the monopoly on decisions about everything that is important, but also has the power to enforce its decisions against these citizens, no matter what the citizen thinks. Decisions, like here in the war against the virus, decisions are always made by politics, not by the citizens, decisions that politics always enforces with the threat of violence against the citizens, like here in the war against the virus, that is what politics always does. And it is exactly the same way that politics decides when the normal person goes to school, to work and to retire, just as it decides on all issues that are important for the lives of normal citizens. And all these decisions, are not up for discussion, but are enforced, as here in the war against the virus against the citizen, with the threat of violence without ifs and buts.

The way politics deals with the citizens in the war with the virus as the recipient of orders from politics with the threat of state violence against the citizens, this war is then again quite commonplace, also without a virus.

And what does this everyday life look like? For most people: First of all school, learn, what, decides the teacher, but what you learn doesn’t matter, learn better than the others; then professional training, what, best of all, with which you can find a good job; start a family, here you are allowed to chose whomever you want; then look for a job, without work there is no money, without money there is nothing at all, you only get money through work; that’s the law, everything else is punished; then work, every day the whole day, 5 days a week, this for 40 years, in between holidays, do politics every 4 years, always go to the polls on a Sunday, then retire at 65, take care of your hobbies, if the money is enough. No wonder that you can only bring people to this everyday life with means that are quite common in the politics that take care of these people, just like the means with which the state supports its citizens in the war against the virus.

So it is not surprising that in its fight against the virus the state, as long as everything goes its normal courser him, shuts down from one day to the next all the freedoms and rights that it normally grants its citizens, as if they were not plagued enough by the virus, threatened with punishment if they do not obey – and that the citizens will follow suit, so that the state with all its prohibitions against the citizens from its war against the virus stands as the saviour of these citizens, even though it has above all asserted its authority over the citizens, and that too is as always.

In any case, the citizens now already know what happens when the enemy in war is not a virus but other states. Blog 5 is about that.


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