Earlier in the pandemic, in Australia we saw the process beginning that I often Tweet about. Catastrophe…

Earlier in the pandemic, in Australia we saw the process beginning that I often Tweet about. Catastrophe disrupting a status quo. ‘Lockdowns’ were tremendous for the poor/low-status, and terrible for the rich/high status. We know what happened next. /1 https://t.co/ne7cAHDF66

The complete rationale for Scott Morrison’s National Cabinet, sold as pap about unity amidst adversity, was to derail this disruption to the status hierarchy. Morrison knew he had to be on the inside of the public health response, to best destroy it. /2

To create a new team, the National Cabinet, to decouple State Premiers from their existing public health teams. Modern conservatives know that if you set something up as a fight, you will automatically generate opposing teams. /3

Even on issues on which the majority of the population have neither knowledge of nor interest in. Like public health. Activate humans’ most fundamental need to have status inside battling teams, and anything is fuel for the fire. Including basic public health. /4

You’d have to be blind not to see how that then unfolded. All the bullshit about ‘lives and livelihoods’, the two opposing teams. It’s total insanity to make those even two distinct things. But team sports has no logic, except for your team to win. For your status to survive. /5

Morrison et al turned Covid into a team sport. From that moment, public health was dead. Premiers and the PM bonded in a new National Cabinet groupthink team, against the increasing ‘resistance’ from opposing teams. But that resistance was part of the plan. /6

Morrison created the resistance as the most fundamental part of the plan. He ‘weaponised’ public health, by turning it into a debate and then fight, between rival teams. That’s what populist politics does. Its entire business model. /7

People are still fighting that battle, here and elsewhere, every day. None of it has achieved anything except destroy public health, no matter which team you’re on. Team sports is never the solution to team sports. ‘Mobilising’ your own team just feeds the clusterfuck. /8

It was a more or less total victory for the pre-existing high status groups in our community. Covid action is dead, all the old status hierarchies are restored, with battles around the margins of things like WFH the only remnant shock to the system. /9

Thus also the utterly desperate reframing of what did happen, with Covid action, as a terrible mistake. The existing status hierarchies are absolutely determined that they won’t be placed under that sort of threat again. ‘Lockdown’ demonisation is relentless, to this day. /10

If being on social media, and voting, are where you think this sociopathic status quo will be rooted out, it’s a sad delusion. The existing status hierarchy created these platforms, to monetise the anger their injustices create. They’re owned by billionaires, ffs. /11

Only catastrophes change societies, meaningfully. Covid gave it a red hot go. Unfortunately its acute impact wasn’t great enough to dismantle those hierarchies. Its ongoing chronic impact may be. But today’s hierarchies will feel that’s another generation’s problem. /end