She forgot to clap
The following is just about the creepiest news story that I ever heard. It’s hard to believe, but true.
Someone–we are not told whom–started this custom in Britain: at 8:00 every Tuesday night, everybody–and they do mean everybody–is supposed to come outside and “clap for the carers.” National Health Service workers fighting off the epidemic, and all that.
Recently a woman, tending her sick child, was unable to get out the door to join the neighborhood clap. (Yes, I know it sounds icky.) Her neighbors promptly “named and shamed” her on Facebook (https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/tired-mum-named-shamed-facebook-18143150), going so far as to say that since she didn’t come out and join the–ritual? can we call it a ritual?–she and her family “don’t deserve” health care if any of them catch the Chinese Wuhan Communist Death Virus From China. That’ll learn her, they said on Facebook, “for showing the street up.”
Hello! Hello? Did we just blunder into The Hunger Games? Or into one of Ray Bradbury’s cautionary tales? I mean, whoa! This is conformity with a vengeance! You’d almost think you were in North Korea.
Maybe the woman was lucky they didn’t bash her door in and drag her outside.
Magna Carta. A country that cherishes eccentrics. P.G. Wodehouse. Rumpole of the Bailey. Alice in Wonderland. None of that great stuff seems to fit in Britain anymore. Suddenly That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis, doesn’t seem far out at all.
We have noticed in recent years that even the most tepid criticism of the National Health ignites a wildfire of near-hysterical wrath. It’s not really that great, you know. Just socialized medicine. There’s a reason why they sell do-it-yourself tooth-pulling kits over there (https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/399032/Now-we-pull-out-our-own-teeth-Boom-in-DIY-dental-kits-as-patients-cannot-afford-NHS-fees).
But fail to turn out for the weekly cheering fest, and see what happens to you. Go ahead, I dare you: say “The National Health could use some improvement.” Walk into any British pub and say that.
This, by the way, is one of the chief reasons why our country’s founders were so against trying to create a democracy. In a democracy, the majority devours the minority. That’s why they created a republic instead.
Some of you reading this must be in Britain. Please tell us–what’s up with Britain? Is your country going full-throttle Fahrenheit 451? Are they going to start eating people who won’t clap for the National Health? Has Political Correctness gobbled up all your liberties? I only ask that because I’m an American and we might be next.
God help us.
This is nothing new with the British. Just after WWI, the people of Britain were asked to observe a minute of silence for their war dead (you didn’t have to be outside, of course!) but a bunch of “suffragettes” who were also communists determined to display their contempt for their country and the dead and in their offices in London set up a horrendous row of noise, screaming, banging on things etc. that could be heard for quite a distance outside. To their credit a bunch of British working women (buttressed by police and working class men) went into the office and gave a rousing spanking to all the “suffragette ladies” with the applause of the men present. It made the papers and I say, “good for them!”
Of course, this is an entirely different matter and those involved should have known better! But perhaps if our feminists had been given a good spanking when they broke all the rules of decency and civilization, the whole thing might have worked out better! If you ACT like a child, you should be TREATED like a child!
The only time I go to Twitter and Facebook is when I receive an email from a person or site that I subscribed to. No matter the topic, invectives are slung in the majority of comments that are totally without substantiation of facts. The British never had our “liberties” so they’re more vulnerable to State tyranny (although we seem to be catching up). Nevertheless, I suspect many of them might be the unwary victims of some kind of mind control. The British government has always been schizoid. I always loved and admired the British people but they seem to have changed beyond all reason. Immigration?
Too much socialism for too many years, would be my guess.
Yes, socialism. Immigration is just a symptom.
I would put socialism below the REAL issue, GLOBALISM. Of course, a global one-world government would have a socialist/communist foundation, but one can have a socialist system and remain a country. Israel is, I believe fairly socialist in its structure.
Globalism is the end game. But i’m not so sure it’s that close. Socialism on the other hand is in our pockets, lives, deaths, and futures. Israel’s form of “socialism” is unique in that it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” – socialism being the economic arm of communism. Our House of Representatives has all 3 isms.
Not close?? We already have people in many “nations” insisting on a global wide digital currency and borders being erased through “immigration.” Now since these poor people didn’t get from Africa or South America to Europe and America themselves, SOMEONE IS SENDING THEM AND PAYING FOR THEIR PASSAGE! And because it isn’t one country doing it, but a global consortia, I don’t think we can any longer ignore the drum-beat of globalism.
You’d think a pandemic or two would quite kill globalism–not to mention Open Borders.
Oh, no! The pandemic was made to order. But Trump wouldn’t follow the lead of the WHO that probably was involved in developing this strain of the Corona virus.
There are a lot of bad actors on the stage right now, and we have to find a way to get them out of the show. I pray people are waking up to the machinations of global government and are ready to smack it down.
If anything I think this pandemic, which has been highly exaggerated, will ultimately push us closer to global governance more than anything in my lifetime. It has given the globalists the perfect pretense to push every agenda they have longed for.
I think it makes people think twice about “bigger is better” government.
I agree
I agree. I think that a lot of people are starting to see just how dangerous unchecked government power is.
This strikes me as another example of virtue signaling at its worst. It’s really just another facet of self righteousness, in this case, framed in a secular, do-gooder context. Don’t dare criticize anyone, no matter how foolish or self defeating their behavior is, but never pass up a opportunity to show how accepting or how compliant you are to arbitrary authority. It’s become extreme, as the Left openly wishes death upon those that don’t live up to its own arbitrary and extremely self-convenient, standards. Eventually, infighting will be the result, and the facade of their apparent cohesion will crumble to reveal what they truly are; a collection of special interest groups bound only by their hatred for the decency of their recent ancestors.
The LBGT so called community really have nothing in common with each other – it is a fiction. The Lesbians don’t care for the Gay men, and vice-versa, and neither trust the Bi-sexuals. The Trans are off in a world all their own. Your right, Unknowable, it is a facade.
Think it a better way to give thanks would be a wage raise.
Gotta put on a good show, am I right? Those idiots would probably force the sick child to go stand at the door and clap, too, if they could.
Bunch of fools.
If they started doing a clap for carers here, I would stay inside just on principal. I don’t like being forced to show my appreciation. It’s like being forced to take a survey and being forced to give a good rating on the survey.
I’m sure that the NHS doctors and nurses are doing their best, and are crippled by a socialist system, but it’s their job and no one should be forced to applaud them. It’s not like they’re doing charity work and not getting paid.
The whole point of socialism is to force people to behave as a group and lose their individuality. What’s the fun of being socialist tyrant if you can’t tyrannize your people?
Their “ritual” wouldn’t make in rural America because we are too spaced apart. Even on my residential street it wouldn’t work. Now if we all use air horns, then you would be talking.
It’s virtue signaling at it’s finest, but it’s also something else that feels almost cultist to me.
NHS is very close to being a cult. And it really isn’t all that good.