A fascinating problem in the US is that they don't actually have the bureaucratic infrastructure for this yet.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loathed living there, but the US does have some freedoms that Europeans ceded long ago. In the US, for instance, there is no centralised marriage registry. That is, the federal government has no records of who is married and who is not, which means if you are getting married in Europe you cannot get a required document from the US that verifies you are not already married to someone there. Fortunately, a sworn statement at the embassy suffices.
The same is true for medical records. The federal government doesn't have a record of who has gotten the vaccine and who has not. Thus, they cannot yet implement a vaccine passport. Of course, they could (and will likely do so) outsource this work to a private silicon valley corporation or a handful of them. It wouldn't be farfetched to imagine google or facebook offering to do this work for them.
Still, that's an obstacle to vaccine passports that US people should cling to and fight to protect. If the federal government ever gains that authority and record-keeping power, the US will be an even more terrifying place than it already is...
It's the double edged sword of the US's system of governance.
If there's something that government could potentially do well, the US is probably going to fail at it. There's so much friction in the system: local, state, & federal governments all with conflicting agendas. Most politicians in the United States also have no clue what it takes to actually implement a program - it would be a challenge to find any level of government in the United States where the staffing level is actually adequate to fulfill their mandates, aside from the military/department of defense.
On the other hand, if there's something you don't want the government to do, the odds are in your favor that the US government will fail at that too.
I appreciate you writing this out. As an American, I've heard some about the vaccine-enforcement protocols which are being rolled out in Europe, but mostly in the abstract, and although I find these concepts intellectually troubling, that abstraction has kept me mostly emotionally disengaged from what feels like a problem for Other People--for Europeans, for the vaccine-critical. For whatever reason, your personal account of government-enforced proscription on the right to enter private businesses (seemingly manifested overnight!) has finally pierced the apathy and left me feeling rattled.
Now that they've arrived, these measures are really never going away, are they?
It's particularly resonant to hear this story from the perspective of someone who did choose to vaccinate. I've followed Paul Kingsnorth's "Vaccine Moment" series with interest. He's a great writer, but the milquetoast, trust-the-system-styled atheist who lives at the back of my skull balks at some sense that the very valid criticisms he lays out could all just be beautiful, empty rationalization for a vaccine-reactionary. For whatever reason, hearing the same concerns and basic arguments expressed by someone who has decided that the vaccine is a greater net help than harm is very soothing to my animal brain. It shouldn't make any difference, since the both of you equally validate the right of individuals not to vaccinate without social, civil, or criminal repurcussion, but until I've trained the knee-jerk neoliberal-party-line instinct out of myself, I'm very glad to have your voice weighing in on the matter.
A further question, then, which I hope doesn't come across as gauche: As a former anarchist, do you feel any... how do I say it. Anticipation?, about the social unrest that is fomenting over vaccine mandates in Europe? You have no love for the Machine in any of its dimensions, economic or political or ecological. The speed at which people are coming to a point of existential disillusionment has been accelerated rapidly over the last couple years. Do you see revolutionary potential in this distrust and discontent? Is revolution even something you believe in anymore?
I hoped that maybe people might understand what you pointed to, that it is possible both to decide personally to get vaccinated without supporting it being mandatory and punitive for those who don't. If anything, that position might be the only one that helps people broaden their analysis between the false either/or.
Do I believe in the revolution? I...I don't know anymore. Watching what became of what little remained of the left in the US in the last five years is terribly depressing, especially the way all dissent on the left is re-narrated as support for fascism. Things are a little less French Terror here, but really the media has done a good job of smearing people who even pose concerns about the constantly changing regimes of mandates.
I think we might instead see a sort of black economy and parallel society arise here. There are already business owners who don't perfectly follow the government mandates (even at risk of being shut down permanently), and of course many people will "forget" to report their large Christmas family gatherings to the government.
But I don't think we'll see revolution, or at least not over this.
I must say I'm no huge fan of Kingsnorth. To me he seems like old wine in new skins, trying to get us who went beyond (lol) the border of the civitas back to his somewhat earthier version of Christianity with him as the lecturer. Who needs that?
In my politics I don't mind Christians. I admire Chris Hedges. But when I read stuff with an anarchist or pagan bend, why do I need Christians.
And frankly and being politically non correct. As a German, this opener was insufferable:
Ha ha ha, I think. Germany. Fences. Internment. Forced injections. Armed police. Scan your code. Kill the unvaxxed.
I really enjoyed this read and always appreciate your thoughtfulness and sensitivity.
I was, however, saddened at the end when I read that you would be returning to the gym and continuing to consent to this system and helping to ensure it is successful.
I hope you'll take some time to consider that not once in these last two years has any person in power or influence, anywhere in the world, ever said that this digital surveillance and control system would be temporary.
Rather, we have been told from the very beginning that we must now accept a New Normal.
Just to clarify, the gym is complying with government rules, rather than enforcing them of their own accord. To give you a sense of what not participating would look like, I'd no longer be able to enter cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters, government offices, hospitals, and many other places if I took that route.
Perhaps if I had a close community of friends here, could afford to build my own gym in our house, and many other things that cost a lot of money, withdrawal would be an option. However, I'm an immigrant to this country, have very few friends because of that, and have a very low income.
This is, of course, the same dilemma around capitalism. I would love to not participate at all in the regime of private property, exploited labor, and industrial production. To do so would mean no longer publishing books, no longer writing on the internet, and attempting to subsist over a very, very tiny amount of land in our backyard. This isn't possible, nor do I think it would even be helpful to anyone.
This was inevitable advent of technology like smart phones, pandemic or not. It follows along in the same vein that James Scott wrote about in Seeing Like a State; the surveillance that personal electronic devices that everyone carries all of the time is the dream for government control. It enables a level of surveillance & control at a level of granularity that previous states could only dream about. China may be a bit ahead of the game with its social credit system implementation, but plenty more governments are headed on the similar trajectories.
The pandemic in this regard is a great opportunity for expansion of surveillance under an emergency and public health guise. Everyone's guard is down a lot more: people are afraid of the disease. And for all of the talk about believing in science, there's certainly very little actual reading of science.
I personally don't have a problem with restrictions at a local level; my martial arts studio requires proof of vaccination on file to train without a mask, for instance. I just don't want to cede that power to the government (or an entity in one of your other comments like Google or Facebook).
A fascinating problem in the US is that they don't actually have the bureaucratic infrastructure for this yet.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loathed living there, but the US does have some freedoms that Europeans ceded long ago. In the US, for instance, there is no centralised marriage registry. That is, the federal government has no records of who is married and who is not, which means if you are getting married in Europe you cannot get a required document from the US that verifies you are not already married to someone there. Fortunately, a sworn statement at the embassy suffices.
The same is true for medical records. The federal government doesn't have a record of who has gotten the vaccine and who has not. Thus, they cannot yet implement a vaccine passport. Of course, they could (and will likely do so) outsource this work to a private silicon valley corporation or a handful of them. It wouldn't be farfetched to imagine google or facebook offering to do this work for them.
Still, that's an obstacle to vaccine passports that US people should cling to and fight to protect. If the federal government ever gains that authority and record-keeping power, the US will be an even more terrifying place than it already is...
It's the double edged sword of the US's system of governance.
If there's something that government could potentially do well, the US is probably going to fail at it. There's so much friction in the system: local, state, & federal governments all with conflicting agendas. Most politicians in the United States also have no clue what it takes to actually implement a program - it would be a challenge to find any level of government in the United States where the staffing level is actually adequate to fulfill their mandates, aside from the military/department of defense.
On the other hand, if there's something you don't want the government to do, the odds are in your favor that the US government will fail at that too.
Well said. I am going to share this with my children (all past 20) as well as my 3 sisters.
I also follow Paul Kingsnorth and have read his entire machine series so far.
I appreciate you writing this out. As an American, I've heard some about the vaccine-enforcement protocols which are being rolled out in Europe, but mostly in the abstract, and although I find these concepts intellectually troubling, that abstraction has kept me mostly emotionally disengaged from what feels like a problem for Other People--for Europeans, for the vaccine-critical. For whatever reason, your personal account of government-enforced proscription on the right to enter private businesses (seemingly manifested overnight!) has finally pierced the apathy and left me feeling rattled.
Now that they've arrived, these measures are really never going away, are they?
It's particularly resonant to hear this story from the perspective of someone who did choose to vaccinate. I've followed Paul Kingsnorth's "Vaccine Moment" series with interest. He's a great writer, but the milquetoast, trust-the-system-styled atheist who lives at the back of my skull balks at some sense that the very valid criticisms he lays out could all just be beautiful, empty rationalization for a vaccine-reactionary. For whatever reason, hearing the same concerns and basic arguments expressed by someone who has decided that the vaccine is a greater net help than harm is very soothing to my animal brain. It shouldn't make any difference, since the both of you equally validate the right of individuals not to vaccinate without social, civil, or criminal repurcussion, but until I've trained the knee-jerk neoliberal-party-line instinct out of myself, I'm very glad to have your voice weighing in on the matter.
A further question, then, which I hope doesn't come across as gauche: As a former anarchist, do you feel any... how do I say it. Anticipation?, about the social unrest that is fomenting over vaccine mandates in Europe? You have no love for the Machine in any of its dimensions, economic or political or ecological. The speed at which people are coming to a point of existential disillusionment has been accelerated rapidly over the last couple years. Do you see revolutionary potential in this distrust and discontent? Is revolution even something you believe in anymore?
I hoped that maybe people might understand what you pointed to, that it is possible both to decide personally to get vaccinated without supporting it being mandatory and punitive for those who don't. If anything, that position might be the only one that helps people broaden their analysis between the false either/or.
Do I believe in the revolution? I...I don't know anymore. Watching what became of what little remained of the left in the US in the last five years is terribly depressing, especially the way all dissent on the left is re-narrated as support for fascism. Things are a little less French Terror here, but really the media has done a good job of smearing people who even pose concerns about the constantly changing regimes of mandates.
I think we might instead see a sort of black economy and parallel society arise here. There are already business owners who don't perfectly follow the government mandates (even at risk of being shut down permanently), and of course many people will "forget" to report their large Christmas family gatherings to the government.
But I don't think we'll see revolution, or at least not over this.
Thank you <3
I must say I'm no huge fan of Kingsnorth. To me he seems like old wine in new skins, trying to get us who went beyond (lol) the border of the civitas back to his somewhat earthier version of Christianity with him as the lecturer. Who needs that?
In my politics I don't mind Christians. I admire Chris Hedges. But when I read stuff with an anarchist or pagan bend, why do I need Christians.
And frankly and being politically non correct. As a German, this opener was insufferable:
Ha ha ha, I think. Germany. Fences. Internment. Forced injections. Armed police. Scan your code. Kill the unvaxxed.
Ha ha ha.
Damn rich for an admitted Englishman to say.
I really enjoyed this read and always appreciate your thoughtfulness and sensitivity.
I was, however, saddened at the end when I read that you would be returning to the gym and continuing to consent to this system and helping to ensure it is successful.
I hope you'll take some time to consider that not once in these last two years has any person in power or influence, anywhere in the world, ever said that this digital surveillance and control system would be temporary.
Rather, we have been told from the very beginning that we must now accept a New Normal.
This isn't ever going away if we consent to it.
Please reconsider your participation in it.
Just to clarify, the gym is complying with government rules, rather than enforcing them of their own accord. To give you a sense of what not participating would look like, I'd no longer be able to enter cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters, government offices, hospitals, and many other places if I took that route.
Perhaps if I had a close community of friends here, could afford to build my own gym in our house, and many other things that cost a lot of money, withdrawal would be an option. However, I'm an immigrant to this country, have very few friends because of that, and have a very low income.
This is, of course, the same dilemma around capitalism. I would love to not participate at all in the regime of private property, exploited labor, and industrial production. To do so would mean no longer publishing books, no longer writing on the internet, and attempting to subsist over a very, very tiny amount of land in our backyard. This isn't possible, nor do I think it would even be helpful to anyone.
This was inevitable advent of technology like smart phones, pandemic or not. It follows along in the same vein that James Scott wrote about in Seeing Like a State; the surveillance that personal electronic devices that everyone carries all of the time is the dream for government control. It enables a level of surveillance & control at a level of granularity that previous states could only dream about. China may be a bit ahead of the game with its social credit system implementation, but plenty more governments are headed on the similar trajectories.
The pandemic in this regard is a great opportunity for expansion of surveillance under an emergency and public health guise. Everyone's guard is down a lot more: people are afraid of the disease. And for all of the talk about believing in science, there's certainly very little actual reading of science.
I personally don't have a problem with restrictions at a local level; my martial arts studio requires proof of vaccination on file to train without a mask, for instance. I just don't want to cede that power to the government (or an entity in one of your other comments like Google or Facebook).