Thread by @Doc_0

The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic uncorked a huge amount of authoritarian pressure that has been building among Western political elites for the past 30 years. At last, the hour of the Enlightened Despot had arrived!

The fantasy of enlightened authoritarianism has long thrived among the elite, a tradition stretching back to the intelligentsia embracing fascism and Stalinism, eugenics and Malthusian nightmares - every ideology that argues for absolute power guided by "scientific consensus."

You don't have to dig back to the World War era to see it. Look at the perpetual swooning over dictators like Castro, the never-ending romance with the notion of the Scientific Ruler who can Get Things Done because he doesn't have to worry about deplorables voting against him.

Much of that romantic infatuation shifted to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping after he took power. Remember lefties mooning over Obama and fantasizing about all the good he could do, if only he could borrow Xi's absolute power for a little while?

Radical environmentalists became explicitly authoritarian as global warming mutated into climate change - the eternal crisis that can only be controlled by putting science priests in charge of a technological dictatorship. No one can be allowed to vote against Mother Earth!

It was maybe 15 years ago that a wave of "democracy must go if we are to survive climate change" op-eds and interviews began dropping. They merged smoothly into Obama's model of soft fascism: wise political rulers commanding private capital without seizing it outright.

More and more over the past three decades, we're heard that some positions are so Right and Correct that nobody should be allowed to vote against them. Settled science, settled social arguments, the time for debate is over... authoritarian urges swelling like bottled gas.

2020 was an explosion of these bottled urges. The elite (and its wannabe followers) finally felt free to scream their hatred and disdain for the masses they feel destined to rule. At last they could howl, "OBEY FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!" The permanent state of emergency had arrived.

Stuffing the authoritarian genie back in its bottle will not be easy. Lists of Issues Just As Important as Covid are being drawn up to justify keeping the state of emergency - and its despotic powers - alive forever. The elite are weary of pretending to respect their inferiors.

Western authoritarians need to maintain some fiction of democracy, to keep the masses quiescent and maintain the legitimacy of their power. For now, the Enlightened Dictatorship is still a dream, but it's more realistic and achievable than ever. The foundation has been laid.

But as with the "thought leaders" of a century ago, Western elites of today are speaking more openly about the need to embrace authoritarian control in order to compete with fascist superpowers. Elite political consensus agrees: we must become more like them.

We'll still pretend our leaders must fear the wrath of the public because we can vote them out of office, but the truth is that after the Great Reset, the list of things you're truly permitted to vote against will get MUCH smaller - and it was already much too short.

And in any event, voting is not an acceptable proxy for true freedom. You are not free if you live under a micromanaging dictatorship that gives you a chance to vote for a few leaders every two years - while most of the real power hides in a vast bureaucracy you don't vote for.

The pandemic was the birthing cry of a beast that was gestating for a long time. Maybe the past 30 years was the third trimester of a pregnancy stretching deep into the past century. Authoritarianism is inherent in progressivism, after all - no one can vote against "progress."

The Ruling Class was bitterly frustrated that it was obliged to pretend it was anything else. It was uncontrollably exuberant when the coronavirus ended the masquerade, and it will not gladly return to a world where deplorable rubes have a sovereign right to disobey it. /end