Mark Steyn: A Hinge Moment of History :: Gatestone Institute
"It was certainly the weirdest year. It began with a supremely weird decision by the entire world, except China and Sweden, to tank the global economy. [meaning no lockdowns there--ed.]
No one has ever done that before. The only major economic power to grow last year was China whose GDP is up by, I think, about 2.5 percent compared to declines everywhere else, including some actually catastrophic ones, such as 11% in the UK.
This decision to tank the entire global economy is something that strengthened China, the creator of the virus, and the exporter of the virus, and weakened any opposition to China -- and that is how they began. [which is one reason why China and their American partners released the bio-weapon-ed.]
This first year of the new weirdness ended with the United States government pretending that its principal threat is a domestic terrorism movement that does not exist.
This is the characterization of the so‑called insurrection on January 6th. We were told two weeks later that there were going to be mass insurrections, not only in Washington but in every state capital. Montpelier, Vermont, for example, the smallest state capital in the Union, went into lockdown. There was no such insurrection at any of these state capitals.
Then they said, "No, there is going to be an insurrection on March 4th," because that was Benjamin Harrison's Inauguration Day back in the old days and people apparently attach such great significance to that, that there was going to be a mass insurrection. There was no such thing on March 4th. Now, we are told it will be March 20th.
I have lived in countries that have real domestic terrorism movements. It is not something that one should concoct out of whole cloth lightly. No country blessed enough not to have a domestic terrorism movement should be inventing one.
We used to be told back after 9/11, there was a cliché after 9/11, "If we don't maintain our normal life, if we don't carry on shopping, if we don't carry on going to sports features, then the terrorists will have won!"
Now, it is the complete opposite with this new alleged domestic terrorism movement, and everything we do has to be changed. We have to have a permanently armed capital city in Washington. Because of this so‑called domestic terrorism movement, we have to have a border wall around the US Capitol. We are living in a blizzard of lies.
Perhaps that is the most disturbing feature of the last year: because most of us see far fewer people and go far fewer places than we did a year ago, we are more dependent on acquainting ourselves with reality through the computer, which means that we are more dependent on a handful of woke billionaires to tell us what reality is.
They are far more open than ever that they get to determine what are the agreed facts. Google made an explicit announcement about this recently. They said that sometimes they would put warnings on things that are factually accurate because, even though they are true, they do not think it is in society's interest for people to be seeing it.
When you talk about freedom of expression, for most people, that is an abstract concept that does not have much practical bearing on their lives.
People do not think of it as a first‑order issue for their own lives because, unless you happen to have accidentally insulted a fire‑breathing imam who is determined to get his revenge or a particularly robust transgender activist who takes action against you, these are not issues that affect most people.
The big change over the last year is that these issues are no longer abstractions. Everyone in the Western world has had some familiarity with the core meaning of Western liberties, whether you are talking about freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of religion, they have all become very real, even for people living the most quiet and uncontroversial lives. We have states, a few weeks ago issuing orders on who you were allowed to spend Christmas or July 4th with.
The ability to go to your church, the ability to open your hairdressing salon, the ability to go and get a cheeseburger at your local diner, all these abstract intellectual philosophical issues are now absolutely real for most people around the Western world. Yet, there has been very little pushback against it.
Even in America, I've always loved that American word ornery, which doesn't really exist in Britannic English because Canadians aren't ornery and New Zealanders aren't ornery. Americans are ornery. I was a little surprised at the way -- including the best-known American states on the planet, New York and California -- basically accepted what was happening with this new regime.
There was a famous remark, I like to quote, by Lord Moulton, an English judge. He also had, during the World War I, what may be my all‑time favorite job title. He was director general of the explosives department -- an enviable job title.
Lord Moulton said that what matters in any healthy society are not the small number of things that one is obliged to do, or, at the other end of the spectrum, the small number of things that one is not permitted to do, but the big chunk in the middle. It is not a question of whether you have to do it, or you are forbidden to do it, but whether we decide for ourselves about those aspects of our lives through what he called the realm of manners. By his estimation, about 80 percent of life should be within the realm of manners rather than within the realm of law.
Now everything is law: How far you have to stand away from people. The realm of manners, in Lord Moulton's phrase -- choice -- has shrunk to nothing.
Everything now, is regulated by the state from above. We are now seeing, for example, influential voices. "The Guardian" newspaper in the UK for example, said the other day that whatever happens to the pandemic, and the COVID, and all the rest of us, they would like us to go into lockdown once every two years. It would supposedly be good for climate change. You do not see this in America, but you quite a lot on overseas news reports. BBC, in the early days of the pandemic was doing all these encouraging reports on how Ireland where it is illegal for you to go more than three miles from your home.
On how Ireland had, fantastically -- and this is really terrific news – they have managed to lower their carbon footprint simply by confining people to their homes and a three‑mile radius. The idea that this is the new normal is deeply disturbing.
At the same time, we have had a serious crackdown on free speech, particularly in America during election year, and culminating on January 20th by the convergence of the Big State and Big Tech.
What has changed this last year is that if you go back to what used to make you unpopular, they were things in which people had a serious emotional investment. For example, if you are transgender, and you see something on the Internet in which somebody says, "You're just a bloke who's wearing a dress." I can understand how that would be something that would make you upset. I can understand people are touchy about that.
Even on the climate change, for example. If you genuinely think that the planet is going to fry in 12 years' time or whatever; that sea levels are going to sweep over and wash away the Maldives, I can understand why you would get upset about that.
As recently as a year ago, the clampdowns on free speech, where Twitter or Facebook would delete your account or put a warning on you were about these kind of emotional issues. Something changed along the way, and now you will be banned or deleted or blocked or silenced simply for disagreeing with the official version of events.
For example, the Great Barrington declaration, which was written by three of the most prominent epidemiologists in the world from Harvard, Oxford, and I think it was Stanford. That was basically deleted from YouTube, banned from Facebook, simply because it contradicted the WHO, CDC official version of events.
In what world did we suddenly wake up and find ourselves living in in which it is not permitted to disagree with government bodies on a matter of public policy on an issue that has only emerged in the past few months?
Even on an emotionally uncontentious topic such as how best to handle a pandemic, you are not allowed to criticize the official version. I do not think there are experts. It is just groupthink enforced by a cabal of woke billionaires, who have more power than anyone else on the planet.
I do not understand why the right, which is always two steps behind on these things, is blithering like nincompoops about how these are private companies and it is nobody's business what they do. These companies, such as Facebook and Google, are more powerful than most nation states today. At some point, they will be more powerful even than the United States.
The other thing that emerged during this year very quickly is that we are at a hinge moment of history. We were told a generation or two back that, by doing trade with China, China would become more like us. Instead, on issues such as free speech, we are becoming more like China.
American companies are afraid of offending China. American officials are afraid of offending China. We are adopting Chinese norms on issues such as free speech and basic disagreements with the government of China. It was interesting to me the other day, a Chinese court ruled that it is alright to refer to homosexuality as a mental illness.
I remembered a year or two back when North Carolina had its so‑called Bathroom Bill -- about what bathrooms you were supposed to use according to what your biological sex was. Because of the pressure from the transgender rights groups, suddenly all the big showbiz companies, all the big sports franchises, all boycotted the state... simply because of this issue of transgender bathrooms.
On the other hand, when China says, "Homosexuality is a mental illness," Disney, and the NBA, and all the other China shills that American corporations have become, all of those groups say, "No problem. We're not going to say a word about it, and we are all going to continue sucking up to China."
For a brief moment in the spring, we were talking about something that mattered, which was the rise of China to global dominance. China was always seeing the long view, and it sees the last half‑millennium as a Euro‑American aberration. They see what's happening now as the natural correction in which China resumes its role as the dominant power on the planet.
We tend to think in short terms. If you are an Anglophone, what happened at the end of the Second World War is that the British Empire ceded global leadership to its prodigal son, the American Republic. If you are a Frenchman, you think the last two centuries since the Battle of Trafalgar have been one continuous Anglo‑American disaster.
If you are China, you take the long view. They are deadly serious about this half‑millennium correction. What we learned in the spring is that everything we need comes from China. China, not only gives us the virus, we are also dependent on China to give us the personal protective equipment ‑‑ all the masks and everything ‑‑ that supposedly protect us from the virus.
China makes our aspirins. Good luck fighting a war against China over Taiwan because by the third day, China will have disrupted the supply chain of aspirins and suppositories. Our tech fighter pilots are all going to be flying into battle with splitting headaches and itchy posteriors.
China makes batteries. Everything that is with you right now is dependent on a battery, your telephone, your laptop, and all the rest of it. At first, the rationale was we are giving China our manufacturing. It is no longer practical for American workers to make widgets.
It is no longer practical for American worker to make crappy T‑shirts, so we let China do all that. We shall become the knowledge economy, in the phrase they used 20 years ago. We are not going to be manufacturing.
Suddenly for some reason, we are all talking about Huawei and 5G. It turns out that China snaffled the knowledge economy away from us as well. There is not much left for us except low‑paid service jobs, and they are the ones that have been totally clobbered by the COVID.
We are now living in the future. We're living in the early stages of a future that is the direct consequence of poor public policy over the last couple of generations. We are not even aware of that. I would love it if we would talk about something important.
If you switch on the news, if you watch TV, if you listen to the radio, if you go in the Internet, you would think that the most critical issues facing the world today are a pampered, third‑rate actress whining to Oprah that she was never taught how to curtsy properly.
We do not talk about anything important even as China is snaffling the world out from under us."
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