The Chinese Hat

 

Photo by Fiona

Here am I, trying out my new Chinese hat, supplied by Williams' hardware store in Kilkee. It is designed to make sure the wearer does not share his thoughts, let alone indulge in kissing and hugging.  It is just the ticket for a population living in fear of a virus that can indeed be nasty and dangerous, but when properly and promptly treated, is not a disease that a healthy immune system cannot deal with fairly easily. It is ideal for reminding them not to think dangerous thoughts against the party line, and in particular, not to put two and two together when the roll-out of vaccines is promptly followed by a huge surge in cases of the infection that they were supposed to prevent, and even to accept the notion that the solution is yet more of the same vaccines!

     The earliest political discussion that I can recall, when a very small boy, was between my father and grandfather (my mother's father), on the question of whether communist China should be allowed into the UN. My father reckoned that it was better to have China inside the tent pissing out than the other way round. My grandfather reckoned the CDC was irredeemably evil, and Chairman Mao, responsible for even more death and evil than Hitler and Stalin put together, would eventually have to be confronted.

     Well, we have a new Mao in charge in China now, with vastly more power at his disposal than Chairman Mao ever had, very well established inside the international tent, but who is finding it just about impossible to live with those silly effete notions about human rights, belief in God, freedom of thought, democracy and personal responsibility. Whether, as seems highly probable, this covid was engineered in a laboratory in Wuhan, or whether it simply cropped up and offered an irresistable opportunity to exert destructive mind control to undermine those effete notions on the global scale, it certainly did present exactly this! The leadership of the West, more fragmented and much less self-confident that it was in the early 1950s, has been panicked into digging themselves into a hole from which they will find it exceedingly difficult to extricate themselves. What politician will be able to stand up and admit they have been hoodwinked on such a ginormous scale, and misled their people so disastrously?

     I am still struggling to understand how it is that myself, aged 75, following cancer treatment and with a heart condition, am supposed on account of being unvaccinated to represent a threat to those who are double vaccinated. They evidently havn't much confidence in their vaccines, and they are quite right there, but do they not see how they are standing logic on its head? I suppose one shouldn't be surprised really, especially if one has paid a bit of attention to literature and the history of the last century and a half. 

     Two books by Eric Fromm, who was one of the writers who inspired me in the 1970s, come to mind; 'The Fear of Freedom' and ''The Sane Society'. Obviously he reckoned his American society was on the insane side back then. God knows what he would make of it now. Things often actually seem to move slower than expected, but half a century is not a long time really, and things are certainly hotting up all the time. My books are still in boxes from the move, and among many jobs there are bookshelves to be made, but I shall look up those books, and I reckon we may be getting closer to what Fromm was advocating, if only people wake up!

     It's when the sea gets up that one notices the resilience of the rocks that guard our seemingly tenuous bit of land sticking out into the ocean. How do they withstand the relentless pounding, day after day, year after year, century after century? The people too here encourage me, with their sense of community, especially like the lady of 90 who lives near here, who refuses to be vaccinated but puts her trust in God, and has just recovered splendidly from covid, rather to the chagrin, I cannot however help suspecting, of a certain type of person who was rather expecting it to finish her off!