I’m beginning to believe that there is only one way to respond to the COVID fanatics, and to COVID ideology in general, and it’s the same response that would be appropriate in the face of any other totalitarian ideology or burgeoning religion: laugh in its face, laugh at those who buy into it, and laugh at those who would sacrifice themselves and their families to it.
Just as we grimly laugh at the Heaven’s Gate cultists, the Jonestown suicide cult, the barbarian fundamentalists in the Middle East, and even many wacked out religious nutjobs here in America, the COVID cult deserves searing, unrepentant ridicule. Just as with other religions, there is nothing to understand in COVID-ism, no deeper meaning behind their eschatological ravings. They do not deserve respect for their beliefs, because those beliefs have been made the weapon that could very well destroy the modern world.
I realize that this sounds very similar to the arguments made by Sam Harris, but in this instance it is not only appropriate, but vitally necessary. When a new totalitarian ideology suddenly erupts out of societal fissures of apathy, fear, and paranoia, it is the moral obligation of individuals who see the danger in it to oppose it virulently.
COVID fanaticism has torn a hole in the fabric of social reality, through which can be seen the coming Dark Age of primitivism and superstition, a demon-haunted world where we all cower, where books and heretics are burned at the same stake, where holy texts are disseminated, temples built, and unbelievers sacrificed. Our primitive nature yearns for that world, which is why it is so important that we oppose these re-barbarizing forces now, rather than later. And the best way to oppose them is to laugh at them.
