Freedom to panic

As the Western economic shutdown continues in response to the pandemic, the government authorities are intensifying efforts to maintain consequent sociocultural moratorium. Any organised gathering, regardless of number of people involved, seem to be viewed under suspicion and with vigilance. In the era of instant information distribution via social media networks, any and all perceived overreaction by government enforcement is broadcast worldwide, creating an impression of despotism and adding to the already existing paranoia of conspiracy delusions.

In the US, the citizenry are apparently in revolt against government quarantine measures, intentionally obstructing roads, thereby undermining government disease control efforts and impeding essential workers from completing their duties. Rather than enforcing quarantine directives from the government, the US law enforcement operatives are apparently refusing to perform their duties, allowing the chaos to continue through their streets. In Europe, despite tireless efforts of law enforcement operatives to maintain order, the subject population continues to flout the established quarantine rules. The over-extension of European law enforcement institution is illustrative in the looting and rioting of supermarkets in Southern Italy. The Western governments face a difficult dilemma: continued economic closure and sociocultural moratorium will result in mass riots that will overwhelm the current existing law enforcement resources; yet, ending the quarantine measures will result in increased infections and subsequent collapse of existing medical infrastructure, causing mass riots.

With the world’s food distribution network disrupted from border closures, processing plant shutdowns, and transportation interruptions - essentially the collapse of capitalist agribusiness model - Western governments must formulate a program of food distribution in their urban centers. Already, due to the efforts of the Western “free press,” their subjects are alerted to the potential food shortage, even as their governments are formulating plans. When social order deteriorates, due to the panic and fear inflamed by their “free press” and malcontents on social media, will the West be able to respond effectively in curtailing the damage wrought by stampeding mob, or will their so-called rulers be occupied poring over the results of a new opinion poll?

Civility is but an illusion, and civilisation is founded upon the most tenuous perception of a common ethnocultural heritage. Societies that are already brittle, due to the relentless undermining of their existing ethnocultural connection, such as the West and especially the US, the consequence in failure to effectively project central authority will translate into rapid social disintegration. Whether through inadequate resources, confusing leadership, or mere indifference, when law enforcement fails, society crumbles. Pandemics may kill large numbers of men, but uncontrolled panic, allowed to propagate through uncensored “free press” and “social media” kill societies and civilisations. The infection that is killing the West is not a virus from Wuhan, but free-flowing panic that rides the avenues of information distribution coupled with weak rulers, to whom responsibility is just a long word, duty a foreign concept, and conflation of charisma for leadership.