freedom – Politically Enraged

Boris Johnson – The Worst Prime Minister at the Worst Time

By. Daviemoo

Boris Johnson has bound the hands and feet of the nation. His slavish allies have picked us up, and carried us to the altar of his ego. Today Johnson is set to slit our collective throats on the altar of populism. Our lifeblood is set to be spilt into the foetid grounds of populism, and thousands of people will die… to save Johnson’s tenure in office… Do you think the deaths of thousands who wouldn’t have died had we kept mandates in place is a worthy sacrifice for a less than mediocre politician to stay employed?

Look to the social media of any prominent scientist and watch them, agog in horror at the behaviours of the conservative government and the wet eared cowardice of their supporters who simply cannot bear another moment of coronavirus restrictions. It’s been so hard to follow the guidance they say, as if they ever did. Selfish people cackling about you wearing a mask in the fruit aisle of Tescos, who never stopped visiting relatives for Sunday lunch and who look down on you for following scientific advisors’ dire warnings. Maybe you do it because you lost someone, or more than one someone, to covid. Maybe you had the virus and it frightened you just how sick you got- or maybe you’re just a decent person who realises that the world didn’t slow to a crawl for almost 2 years for no reason, no insidious plot of replacement theory to be seen except in the rheumy eyes of these freedom fighters who didn’t show up to protest against literal human rights being debated in parliament.

Today I signed an open letter Professor Christina Pagel is advertising, to hear experts like her speak about the lifting of restrictions.

Experts like Professor Pagel have, the entire time, erred on the side of caution because she, like most decent humans, believes that everyone deserves the chance to live through the pandemic. But today, Johnson is revealing his plans to “live with the virus”, which involve payment for testing, obfuscating numbers and allowing those infected to be able to wander around positive without any mandate for staying home. Boris Johnsons’ plans for living with coronavirus will kill people. Hundreds, thousands of people, who will die because he has become a populist fundamentalist, who seems to think you are free to become a vector of mass infection if you want to, and the cherry on the cake is that we simply won’t even know it’s happening because he refuses to even keep tabs on it.

Why has he done this, you may ask? Because it distracts us from the sheer, unquestionable fact that Boris Johnson is terminally inept (quite literally), selfish sheister, a terrible PM, a man who is more vacuously obsessed with his ability to keep reflecting back British law like the flesh of a Y incision so he can carve out the still weakly shuddering heart of British democracy and hold it aloft as a prize before losing interest and casting it off.

Since Johnson took power in 2019 he’s appointed someone who committed something tantamount to espionage as our Home Secretary, a man who wants to repeal the human rights act to justice secretary, a woman who was surprised people use YouTube to learn (what did you think it was for Nadine?), has had a doctored report on racism produced which stated it consulted with experts who were shocked to see their names included. He’s presided over the worst death rate in Europe, lied about the EMA’s capabilities of stopping vaccine rollouts and taken credit for the NHS’ stellar job in the first deployment- speaking of the NHS, he’s continued to slowly pare away funding for it and has thrown GPs to the wolves to distract from his role in covid mismanagement. Whilst many of us were burying relatives by zoom or saying goodbye to people we love via FaceTime he was throwing back Moet with colleagues, convinced by virtue of political party or class that they were exempt from the rules they themselves created.

He’s presided over the most disastrous outcome for Brexit, and rather than face up to that has circled the wagons of the British press to disseminate distractions about trans athletes in bathrooms or other such nonsense, instead of showing 12 hour queues to drop off goods- he blamed COVID for Brexit issues, Brexit for COVID issues and not once through all of these debacles, not at one time- has he ever said “It’s us. We’re sorry, we made mistakes”.

Whilst Hancock and he were breaking the law with PPE procurement, he never once paused to wonder if this was the wrong thing to do, the wrong way to act. Because to Johnson, the job of PM is simply a badge of honour, the next “to present” on his CV. He doesn’t care about decency, the rule of law or any freedoms but his own. Our highest office, the most vital political job in the UK will be used as fodder for dinner parties down the line. He’ll sit, clutching a designer glass of designer champagne telling people about the time a billionaire oil baron shook his hand and he came away richer than he was before, skipping over the shambles he’s left the country in. No matter how poor, or miserable or sick you or I or our friends or family get, Johnson’s future is writ large: as long as he can continue his decadence we could all die tomorrow. It won’t change a thing for him.

Now as we all walk, open eyed into a country with no covid restrictions some of us see three lions, strutting down the street proudly as the “winners” of the pandemic. But others see vectors of infection, a populace strolling sullenly into the maw of the beast, wondering who we love will die or become disabled now because the libertarians amongst us think that’s a worthy sacrifice. The sad thing is, people genuinely believe that it’s worth people dying for them to be able to go into Tescos without a bit of cloth on their face. This is where the poison of populism has gotten us to – everything is the enemy. Masks, vaccines, Corbyn supporters, the left, the woke, everything out to stop people living how they want- but the people who deeply believe this don’t seem to realise that we don’t live how we want – because of them. This imposition of their imaginary freedoms has now stretched to being a climate denier- the seriously bad weather was the enemy this week, how dare that woke storm stop me from… doing what? It’s cold, wet and rainy, just stay in the house and antagonise social justice warrior on twitter like normal you losers- but they didn’t did they. Just to spite the weather(?) people went on walks and got blown over, and that’ll show… Mother Nature I suppose, that these people can’t be stopped from their stupidity. Michael Gove said we’re “sick of listening to experts”. Apparently we are, but we have an unending zeal for listening to absolute morons.

Johnson stands as leader on the cusp of a potential war. Look at the outcome of brexit- more expensive goods, a cost of living crisis unprecedented even when the country’s covid debts are already repurchased, lower world standing, worse quality of life. Look at the outcome of covid- worst death rate in Europe and still going, a stalled vaccine programme, no attempts to even mandate safety via healthcare workers and literal capitulation to anti vaccine terrorists (I’ll use that word even if the press won’t). If Johnson remains in charge for war I suspect the country will suffer untold levels of misery there too, starving in the street as our pleura fill up with covid pneumonia fluid, homeless because we couldn’t afford the rent- and still the Johnsonites will cry “but imagine what it would be like under Starmer”.

I normally urge people to stay safe, to wear their masks, take their vaccines, to social distance- but it’s actually reached the point where I don’t think it’s pointful. Too many people have become inured to death and misery and just do not want to try to avoid it. Some even take a strange and perverse pleasure in being as obnoxious as possible. So I suppose now I must change my signoff from that to – I hope you survive, dear reader.

viemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

If your bodily autonomy circumvents everyone else’s, it’s not bodily autonomy – It’s health based tyranny

By Daviemoo

Ever since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, something politely termed as debate has raged between a deeply factional society. Bodily autonomy and freedom are two terms thrown around often by people who simply don’t understand the concepts they’re discussing. And whilst we’re told as we grow that we sometimes simply need to learn to disagree civilly with people whose views differ from our own- what do we do when those views carry potentially deadly consequences? Is someone’s skewed view of liberty worth dying for?

What is freedom to you?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself hundreds of times throughout this pandemic. The answer is more closely tied to the repercussions of Brexit, oddly. Freedom to me was the right to rights themselves. Losing the right to free movement sickened me, as someone who always loved, and wanted to move to, the continent but was prevented through fear of distance between myself and my family. The right to rights is a strange sentence, but being bound or restricted But as the coronavirus spread around the world and I saw the death toll mount, I- and many others- knew that our freedom was imperilled.

As the pandemic has raged on burning away people’s lives, making people long term sick, tanking economies, worsening wealth disparity many people have woken up to injustices- but in very different ways. Some of us fight with desperation to remove a government intent on enacting damaging laws, from the throttling of our democratic right to protest, to curtailment of our ability to aid those in distress who are not UK citizens, to removing “dissidents'” citizenship, to the enfranchisement of voting by implicitly attaching a cost to votership.

Some rage against a system they see as horrifically authoritarian for enacting emergency powers to restrict movement and interaction amongst people- enacted to control the spread of the coronavirus but to some, the reasoning of “a virus with a 97% survival rate” is a flimsy one.

This is where so many of us fundamentally differ. In 2020 the human population estimate is 7.753 billion.

If 3% of these people died, this would be a death count of 232,590,000.

Two hundred and thirty three million lives. This of course only factoring in the deaths from coronavirus. All too easily, the deaths from delayed medical treatment, from delayed ambulances, from exhausted physicians are written off.

One of the main kickbacks from my speaking in support of coronavirus restrictions is “what about deaths from the vaccine”.

This is understandable- but does not account for the fact that any deaths are sad, especially unnecessary ones like coronavirus deaths- or deaths from the vaccine, regardless of how low the risk. We should count these deaths as deaths due to the pandemic- because no coronavirus vaccine would be needed without the pandemic. Equally, look at the escalated rate of suicide due to isolation. This pandemic has a huge death toll, that extends it’s sinister reach far beyond the death brought by being infected and every single one of these deaths is a loss, a travesty and should not have happened. The way deaths have been manipulated for a political agenda is disgraceful. Ultimately and objectively, mass death is not a political decision- and the philosophical arguments can be bandied back and forth, but ultimately behind politics and philosophy are humans laid suffering from something that went from being an unprecedented worldwide event, to preventable for the most part, if people curtailed their contact.

The emergence of coronavirus allowed an unprecedented glimpse into the mindset of so many around us, people who openly distain others’ as long as they don’t feel controlled, coerced, don’t feel spoken down to, don’t feel like they have to make changes to accommodate others- forgetting of course that if others didn’t do it, they would also be at risk.

After two years, it’s openly a hostile move to walk into a shop- a place you have to go to buy food- without wearing a mask. Some see it as a laughable move which won’t prevent anything, some see it as a symbol of oppression and control from the state, others simply do not care and still more are a mix. There’s also a small subset of people who just like to annoy other people.

Those opposed to mask wearing, to social distancing, to lockdowns or any other measures declare that it’s their right to DO WHAT THEY WANT. They state that they shouldn’t be controlled, coerced, forced to do things they don’t want to do. But I have to wonder how often they follow that thought pattern to it’s apex of “for the common good”. Nobody that I know wants to wear masks, wants to get vaccines, wants to spend weeks alone. It was, I believe, seen by some as a civic duty or, more simply, the right thing to do. Was it? I believe so. Some are diametrically opposed.

When it comes to politics and more, it’s inevitable that disagreement will pop up. But the sheer volume of working class people cheerfully arguing that the economy can’t be allowed to fail if it means keeping people alive is terrifying – it’s the height of “it won’t happen to me”.

And of course it’s right and normal for humans to disagree on matters- but matters of mass death? It’s a strange world we’re forced to live in where people believe that their own, their loved ones- and strangers, who they don’t know- will die and that’s a worthwhile sacrifice.

It’s completely understandable that people are sick of living the lives we’ve had to under coronavirus- but it’s so often missed that people’s lives will continue this way until the virus has become endemic (we all knew from the start we’d never eradicate it). It’s the very people up in arms about masks and health measures who necessitate it’s continuance.

I read the story of an oncology doctor on Friday, who had to cancel a cancer patient’s operation because the bed they would have taken was now filled with an anti vax covid patient.

The covid patient would likely be moved to a ventilator soon, but the loss of that precious window for the cancer patient likely meant that they too would die. The cancer would grow, it would metastasise and just like that, another two people who didn’t have to die, but died, because of this virus- and because of the choices of an anti vaccine enthusiast.

Your choice to kill?

You see, there was a tipping point in the pandemic where your choices were miasmic and didn’t have the sway to hugely impact on the outcome. We were uninformed, we were all waiting for more research, more information. And now here we are- where your personal choices, from declining to wear a mask to refusing vaccines- are in a very real way, wreaking real life consequences upon people.

I’ve always levelled a deep and profound blame at a government simply unable to act decisively. Wishy washy guidance, hand wringing over following their own rules, duplicity- but now the onus truly has shifted to a split with those who wilfully will not comply building off the ignorance of the Conservatives.

It’s confusing that people are being given the choice to risk others’ health, all under this strange umbrella of bodily autonomy. Many of the people who support forced birth have appropriated their hated moniker, “my body, my choice”, for their crusade for the freedom they find difficulty in defining.

The co-opting of pregnant people’s rights

A pregnant person can, and should, be able to choose what happens with a pregnancy for many reasons, from whether they wished to get pregnant in the first place, financial and emotional readiness, health, safety and more. This isn’t a debate. A pregnancy can’t go on without a body to co-opt, but a body can go on without a pregnancy. Human beings are not incubators and pregnancy can have horrific consequences- from thinned bones, post partum depression and psychosis, scarring, bleeds… death. Every pregnancy constitutes a risk towards the pregnant person’s health. Their body will be, no matter how smooth a pregnancy goes, permanently changed simply by going through it.

And when it comes to being forced to take vaccines, this argument is, while controversial, more understandable. But that’s the essence of “my body, my choice”. You choose not to take a vaccine and you take on the risk to deal with consequences- societal (being excluded from mass events etc) or personal (dying or becoming disabled from long COVID). And of course, anti vaxxers will point at the death rate of vaccines- but again, this is bodily autonomy in action. Choosing to take the vaccine is you choosing to take that risk- negligible, but existing risk. Every person who died from the vaccine to my knowledge took that needle because they chose to, and accepted the risk.

The gleeful appropriation of “my body, my choice” is a misnomer. Pregnancy doesn’t spread via the air. Pregnancy only puts risk on the body of the person carrying it. You won’t spread mass pregnancy simply by being in a room while pregnant.

Outside of a pandemic the choice to make is whether to take a vaccine. Whether to take that risk, on the off-chance you come across the disease in question. During a pandemic, the choice is NOT to take the vaccine when there is a silent timer counting down to your exposure- and whilst it’s seen as bodily autonomy to make that choice, it’s not bodily autonomy- it’s bodily tyranny, because your mere presence in a room- especially if you’ve been wandering around with no mask, no social distancing, no vaccine- creates a risk, removing everyone around you’s bodily autonomy, their choice NOT to be sick. So now the question is- does one person’s bodily autonomy supersede that of the rights of everyone they could come into contact with?

People believe the merits of the anti vax movement- but isn’t it strange how the movement went from telling us that vaccines cause autism (neurodiversity by the way is a normal condition and function, though there are naturally extreme cases) to being silent, when 5 billion doses of vaccines were deployed over months. Suddenly the threat is “oh within two years you’ll be sorry”… about what?

Once some credible evidence comes to light we can discuss the nuance of whether vaccination vs non vaccination is worthwhile. Otherwise we continue to debate the efficacy of medicine that works vs rolling a lottery of disability, sickness and death.

Do I have to die for you to change your attitude?

Lets say coronavirus didn’t kill anyone but makes them sick like I was. Desperately poorly for weeks, exhausted, dizzy, sick, unable to eat, unable to sleep, in pain, headaches and more. I lost weight, I was light sensitive, my body ached. I still have a cough in December and I stopped actively suffering in mid October…

Is it worth running the risk of spreading that en masse? Even without death, mass sickness and disruption to peoples’ lives is a huge ask of everyone you may walk past in a day.

Society has not changed, no matter how much we can state it has. Change would be adaptation to the crisis at hand. What has changed are the circumstances in which people can easily advertise to you whether they care about those around them or think their own welfare comes first. No longer can we believe the myth that humans would try to collectively come together to protect each other- because all too many of us have joined the war on coronavirus on the wrong side.

The societal shift

One can’t necessarily pinpoint why society is how it is, and it appears that it’s a mistake to imply that we haven’t, at our core, always had this type of person in our society who will refer to those who make sacrifices for the collective “sheep”. But sheep do what they do out of fear, and out of instinct. I’m not overly scared of coronavirus, of isolation, of masks and vaccines- I’m scared of human beings who would rather lash out in violence than give simple proof that their claims of government takeovers, of poisoned vaccines, of masks causing health issues.

Until we can move past this virus as a collective, this battle will continue and the victims will continue to mount until common sense can stretch to both sides of the aisle. There will always be exceptions to those who can follow restrictions. But there will also always be those who spurn them. And the question continues to gather urgency – how long can society countenance the outliers when their actions, or lack thereof, endanger us all?