The Great Reckoning

Boris knew the Covid laws were extreme and they bit him in the ass

Caesar Augustus, first emperor of Rome

The general public in Britain is furious—at their Prime Minister, his supporters and the entire upper class, the people who make the rules. The ‘gardengate’ debacle is about rules, who makes them and who has to follow them. The British are known for their sense of fair play, and cannot forgive politicians and high level staff enjoying drinks during the most extreme crackdown on civil liberties ever enacted during peace time. The PM and his staff weren’t following the rules while we did. Off with his head!

Not so fast. Let’s avoid throwing out the Boris Baby with the dirty Downing Street bathwater. Let’s be intelligent about this because an awful lot is at stake. Like the very legitimacy of the democratic state, based as it is on the rule of law. The problem is that some laws are simply bad, as the lockdown laws surely were. At the same time, a lot of blood has been shed to establish that nobody is above the law, not even the King or Boris. There is the conundrum. The question is, are the Brits going to turf the PM over ignoring bad laws made in a time of uncertainty and turmoil?

Plenty of pundits are predicting the imminent end of Boris. But there is another way of framing this political uproar.

I believe this is the beginning of a painful process you could call the Great Covid Reckoning. There is a growing, not yet fully acknowledged public outrage at following rules that were extreme, mostly unnecessary and in the end, utterly undemocratic. At being duped by elites who clearly never believed in them. A Reckoning is necessary, and inevitable. It is also dangerous because it could further divide, weaken and embitter a society already unraveling, exhausted, and rudderless.

The last thing the West needs is more chaos at the top, more division and acrimony at the bottom. What we desperately do need is actual leadership, the old fashioned kind that invokes ideals, that dares to speak plainly of mistakes made and rectifying them. That is not afraid to identify the actual enemies of freedom and to say: no more of this. That can admit that we followed a blueprint made in China and that maybe Chinese Communism and its surveillance state is a bad fit for the West. The legal pushback against the Chinese Model has already begun:

<https://www.scribd.com/document/490274322/Request-for-Expedited-Federal-Investigation-Into-Scientific-Fraud-in-COVID-19-Public-Health-Policies>

But this isn’t just a legal problem; it is indeed a ‘clash of civilizations’ and we need strong, visionary leadership to win. Where is that going to come from?

I’m going to stick my old neck out and say that in spite of his obvious flaws, his flailing about, his evasions, lies and mistakes, there is no better man to do that than Boris Johnson. Nobody else, neither the doddery Biden nor the arrogant Macron, is a serious candidate for such an historic role. Of all the leaders in the West, he is the only one who exhibits the humanity, the wit, the energy and the charisma to pull the dispirited western nations together with a vision of how to survive the economic and social devastation the pandemic has wrought. And he is someone who is capable of standing up to the globalists, the Great Schwab Reset and the gang of oligarchs.

In this spirit, I’ve decided to write Boris a friendly letter of advice. After all, he needs all the help he can get. And since I am old and don’t even know him, I can be frank.

Dear dishevelled one,

Forgive me for addressing you in this familiar manner; l’m old enough to be your mother and I have a certain warm regard for you though I am not British. Maybe I care because you know how to laugh, which is a signal that at least you’re not a fascist. Since the media has gone to war on you over that ‘gardengate’ thing, I thought you could use a kind word wrapped in a bold plan. So here it is:

Step up your game, dear, and seize the historic role of revitalizing the West. Only you, Boris Johnson, are able to unite the battered and bewildered Western nations and save them from their blind, destructive embrace of the Chinese Communist Party. By that I mean mindlessly adopting the calamitous Covid policies, such as lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and vaccine mandates: all of this was modeled by China and its helpers such as the WHO, the CDC, and various corrupt actors like Fauci, who has a long history of playing ball with the Chinese Science establishment.

But first, you have to clearly admit that it was your mistake, that you have seen the error of it and that you intend to make it right. It must be the kind of old-fashioned apologia that has teeth, no mealymouthing allowed. You have to get into the ugly details of how, like the virus itself, the CCP exported a package of scientific fraud and deception. And that you and your MPs are indeed to blame for embracing most of it.

That we, the entire West, so willingly accepted this tyrannical madness is a signal that even before the pandemic hit, we were weak, riven by woke wars and no longer certain of our historical place in the world. All we had to do was to follow our own, carefully crafted pandemic plans, none of which specified this evil, oppressive regime. But we fell into line with China, forsaking our liberties on the altar of fake ‘safety’. You, and I might add the other western leaders, owe the public more than an apology: you have to seek out those victims who got arrested because they sat on a park bench or were sunning themselves on a beach, put them in front of a camera, say your mea culpa and ask what you can do to undo the damage. That’s the only thing that might assuage the gathering storm of outrage. I do not for a moment believe that you would seriously entertain such a scenario, but let’s face it, Boris, you are on the ropes. You’ve got nowhere to go except down, and I agree with the Spectator who said that you have lost control over your political destiny.

There is a way to reclaim it but you will find it a thorny path.

As a classics scholar, you must be painfully aware that the West right now resembles Rome just before the first emperor, Caesar Augustus, imposed order and a 300 year long peace on the Roman empire during the first century AD. They also suffered from terrible plagues but at least, they learned from them.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-rome-learned-deadly-antonine-plague-165-d-180974758/

We should learn from the Covid disaster that we need stability and a leader who can engage with people on the basis of shared values which do still exist throughout the West. You might not resemble Augustus, but he could be an inspiration to you at this watershed moment. Unfortunately, all indicators are that we’re heading towards some kind of horrifying global surveillance state with Chinese characteristics. With the full consensus of the West’s investor class dizzy with the putrid smell money and power. Those people need reining in, Boris. That’s what Brexit was all about, and you must finish that job. Right now, you’re losing that narrative as well.

You may be almost out of office, but you have shown again and again that you can come back from dire straits and land at the top. I believe you could do it one more time. I don’t need to remind you of your long standing ambition to be a Churchillian figure. Here is your chance! Grab it and ride the tsunami of destiny, be true to your higher self and in the process, save us.

You might begin by finally firing the statisticians at SAGE, the people who have consistently and wildly overstated the outcomes of the pandemic variants. Not once did they get it right, and at Christmas, you did find your spine and resisted re-instating an all-out lockdown, which their idiotic and deliberately dark estimates certainly supported. You were attacked for that, but also proved right. That’s a good position to be in. Build on that, Boris, fire the lot of them.

Reorganize Downing Street and welcome back people strong enough to disagree with you. You know who I mean.

Stop political pillow talk with your ambitious spouse. Never forget that she wasn’t elected to office. Everyone knows you have a ‘woman problem’; don’t give them any ammunition, please.

And just to be clear: I am not actually advocating for you to become a benign dictator. What I am saying is that clear, moral and political leadership and above all, accountability for the serious mistakes made during the pandemic in the West will determine the final outcome. There is plenty of evidence that the pandemics the Romans suffered contributed to the eventual downfall of that mighty empire. While those pandemics were hundreds of times more deadly than this one, our China-led, utterly absurd over-reaction could also spell the end of the West as we once knew it.

Boris; do not allow this to happen. Britain is the cradle of modern democracy and it could play an historical role in preserving and redefining it.

I am counting on you to rise up, wrap yourself in the mantle of destiny and deploy your formidable political skills and intellectual gifts. Good luck. We’re all watching.