I was talking to an anti-vax friend and he and I agree on a lot. We both distrust pharma companies, the mainstream media, and most governments… we just draw very different conclusions from that.

I understand where he’s coming from. We’ve just went a different direction. In a way I get him more than liberal friends, who seem dangerously naive.

This is what’s called the horseshoe theory of politics, or what I call the soggy taco problem. Basically the middle gets all damp and milquetoast and falls out. All that’s left are the furiously crispy edges.

Institutions

Take the American CDC for example. They’re issuing obviously corrupt and politicized advice and failing on every front. You can’t trust them. But then who do you trust? Everybody has to do their own research and that can lead to very different places.

Some people like me are furious for the CDC not doing enough. Others are furious for them doing too much. Into this void of authority step all kinds of snake-oil salesmen and women, telling people even worse bullshit and selling them ever worse ‘solutions’. You fall out of the mainstream and suddenly you’re swimming with crocs and logs. What do you cling onto? One will float and the other will tear you apart.

As Yeats said, in what is the epitaph for Empire,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Media