This'll be a thread. @bartenderhemry.bsky.social quoting & quoted tweet are very important. Not just the correct framing & accurate critique, but also point us all to what is really going on. I've written on this before here & at the mothership, but I'm going to make the same points again. 1/
Two years ago on the old site I made a similar point about R terror in criticizing a goofy article about how Ds are losing rural areas and my replies were full of stories like this. This should be national news, it should replace the diner stories for this cycle
The violence & terrorism being employed, both physical & rhetorical, is intended to establish a competitive system of control, which is necessary to subvert the state, society, economy, religion, etc. 2/
I'm using Bernard Fall's conceptualizations of these. Fall, a professional forebear, was a French partisan underground fighter, served in the French military after WWII, was a Nazi hunter, a journalist, & advised & trained the French & US in the Indochina & Vietnam wars. 3/
In The Theory & Practice of Insurgency & Counterinsurgency, Fall explained his concepts. The guerrilla tactics that @bartenderhemry.bsky.social is writing about are what Fall talked & wrote about in 1964 & 1965. 4/
Fall wrote: "The communists, or shall we say, any sound revolutionary warfare operator (the French underground, the Norwegian underground, or any other European anti-Nazi underground) most of the time used smallwar tactics—not to destroy the German army, of which they were thoroughly incapable," 5/
"but to establish a competitive system of control over the population. Of course, in order to do this, here and there they had to kill some of the occupying forces and attack some of the military targets. But above all they had to kill their own people who collaborated with the enemy." 7/
"But the “kill” aspect, the military aspect, definitely always remained the minor aspect. The political, administrative, ideological aspect is the primary aspect." 8/
decades earlier the IRA, although having a number of successful actions against British Army regular and special forces and uniformed police, originated a counterintelligence program targeting both elite police detectives and Irish informers, which left the British operating largely blind
I think a major reason that so many health-care facilities have irresponsibly lax masking policies is that rightist zealots caused so many escalating conflicts and made so many credible threats.
And, as long as bullying continues to effectively limit political expression and in civic spaces and in health care and in election administration, they will increasingly adopt it.
One reason that the J6 prosecutions are essential.
I read somewhere this week that health care workers are now the most likely of any profession to be physically attacked on the job. My internist talks about longtime patients literally screaming in his face about “the plandemic” & I think he’d definitely quit if he didn’t still have kids in school.
There was some online video called that that went viral in 2020, claiming the pandemic was manufactured by Big Democrat or…something, & that kind of person ate it up.
nope. hcws do not want to mask any more, period.
i heard one (very nice) CHEMO nurse explaining to a patient that she (patient) was SO immunocompromised she’d have to wait for her next treatment
she recommended handwashing, did she recommend masks? not even a whisper. was anyone masked? no
i get a lot of healthcare and interact with a lot of hcw.
none of them are masking.
not a single one says “you get it, at least i can wear my mask with you.”
they say “oh” (surprise) “do you want me to wear a mask” (communicating dislike)
- People have a very strong drive to conform to whatever their peers and the perceived elite are doing, hence the irritation that you might expect them not to conform.
- I have been saddened to learn that a surprising number of RNs are themselves reactionary zealots.
my friend (a strict mask-wearer) had his nyc gp laugh at his insistence on staying masked and said "you don't have to wear a mask, everyone will eventually get covid!"
another friend is a cancer patient at msk and her doctors stopped wearing masks a year ago
yeah i feel lucky that not a single dr has said a negative word to me at least. nor any stranger. and my dentist happily lets me bring my own HEPA.
that’s truly the best we can hope for in most of the country!
they are so over the pandemic they are proving it by bypassing what would have been a normal guideline before the pandemic.
an entirely immunocompromised person would have masks worn around them in the past.
I really feel for those folks these days. And long COVIDers... Can't ever remember this society championing "f u" as a social ideal before recent times...
I am delighted to report that my own experience is different.
Masks are required at the major SF Bay area healthcare facility which I use, and in my dentist's office most of the staff and patients are masked as much as possible, and there's an air filter/UV sterilizer in every room.
Lax masking even in eg cancer hospitals is also endemic in 🇬🇧 but security threats aren't why.
I'd say here it's a mix of:
- official disinformation (ie hiding its airborne)
- atrocious top down leadership/ modelling (politics, medical)
- mainstream media is anti public health
- herd instinct
The problem is it's asymmetrical.
Doctors can fire patients (and do - esp pediatricians who have had it w/ anti-vax parents.)
But the patients can return with guns blazing.
Similarly, too many public health administrators and local election administrators are leaving those jobs because they've received so much harassment, so many credible threats
educators too. i was forced out of a highly-regarded 14-year teaching career because my administration caved to intimidation from right-wing bigots. i know so many other queer educators who had to leave the profession because of bullying campaigns
