It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ripley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ripley’s intestinal tract.
But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).
Everything is back to normal, right?
Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here.
Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.
For example, I just happened upon this “important COVID-19 information,” which you need to be aware of (and strictly adhere to) if you want to attend a performance at this Off-Broadway theater in New York City, where “everything is back to normal.”
I could pull up countless further examples, but I don’t want to waste your time. At this point, it isn’t the mask and “vaccination” mandates themselves that are important. They are simply the symbols and rituals of the new official ideology, an ideology that has divided societies into two irreconcilable categories of people: (1) those who are prepared to conform their beliefs to the official narrative of the day, no matter how blatantly ridiculous it is, and otherwise click heels and follow the orders of the global-capitalist ruling establishment, no matter how destructive and fascistic they may be; and (2) those who are not prepared to do that.
Let’s go ahead and call them “Normals” and “Deviants.” I think you know which one you are.
This division of society into two opposing and irreconcilable classes of people cuts across and supersedes old political lines. There are Normals and Deviants on both the Left and the Right. The global-capitalist ruling establishment couldn’t care less whether you are a “progressive,” or a “conservative,” or a “libertarian,” or an “anarchist,” or whatever you call yourself. What they care about is whether you’re a Normal or a Deviant. What they care about is whether you will follow orders. What they care about is whether you are conforming your perceptions and behavior and thinking to their new “reality” … the hegemonic global-capitalist “reality” that has been gradually evolving for the last 30 years and is now entering its totalitarian stage.
I’ve been writing about the evolution of global capitalism in my essays since 2016 — and since the early 1990s in my stage plays — so I’m not going to reiterate the whole story here. Readers who have just tuned into my political satire and commentary during the last two years can go back and read the essays in Trumpocalypse (2016-2017) and The War on Populism (2018-2019).
The short version is, back in 2016, GloboCap was rolling along, destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet that it came into sole unchallenged possession of when the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and everything was hunky-dory, and then along came Brexit, Donald Trump, and the whole “populist” and neo-nationalist rebellion against globalism throughout the West. So, GloboCap needed to deal with that, which is what is has been doing for last six years … yes, the last six — not just two and a half — years.
The War on Dissent didn’t start with Covid and it isn’t going to end with Covid. GloboCap (or “the Corporatocracy” if you prefer) has been delegitimizing, demonizing, and disappearing dissent and increasingly imposing ideological uniformity on Western society since 2016. The New Normal is just the latest stage of it. Once it gets done quashing this “populist” rebellion and imposing ideological uniformity on urban society throughout the West, it will go back to destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the rest of the world, which is what it was doing with the “War on Terror” (and other “democracy”-promoting projects) from 2001 to 2016.
The goal of this global Gleichschaltung campaign is the goal of every totalitarian system, i.e., to render any and all deviance from its official ideology pathological. The nature of the deviance does not matter. The official ideology does not matter. (GloboCap has no fixed ideology. It can abruptly change its official “reality” from day to day, as we have experienced recently). What matters is one’s willingness or unwillingness to conform to whatever the official “reality” is, regardless of how ridiculous it is, and how many times it has been disproved, and sometimes even acknowledged as fiction by the very authorities who nonetheless continue to assert its “reality.”
