An Act of Radical Self-Forgiveness

Forgive thyself thy trespasses.

The article “Let’s Declare A Pandemic Amnesty” by Emily Oster is being misinterpreted by most people as a signal of fear or vulnerability in the ruling Party. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The article is in no way written as a plea for clemency; rather, it is a command of impunity. Articles penned by Party apparatchiks always use the “Royal We” — here it’s hidden in “Let’s,” i.e., “Let us” — when giving commands. The inviting language offers an opportunity for some helpful cognitive dissonance in the psychology of the reader. The reader now has the opportunity to accept or reject the proposal, as if such a decision will matter at all in what happens next.

The Party of power must engage in its own cognitive dissonance, the space for which is rapidly waning, to justify their rule through their political formula. The Party must always pretend not to be in power. The pretense must be made that some scary force — like a right-wing one, gasp! — will use the power of the state to prosecute the obvious crimes of the Party, even though the levers of power are and always have been securely in the hands of the Party.

To the core readership of articles like Oster’s, “We” refers to those who comply with the ruling class. Because her readers feel in agreement with the article, the article’s wording takes on a “democratic” rather than commanding tone, thereby upholding the illusion. The other target audience — the people who do not accept this political formula of the Party — sense a distinct goading character in the message, which elicits reactions like this:

The article thus achieves exactly what it wants, which is to make the left seem reasonable, and the right seem like foaming-at-the-mouth crazies.

Of course, it’s not at all crazy to insist that the regime formed in the Nuremberg moral paradigm should be made to eat its own medicine. At the same time, resistance to their power is part of their energy-feedback mechanism. I'm not going to give you some take like: “Just comply with power! It’s not a good strategy to resist power.” But obviously, reactions akin to the one pictured above serve more to agitate and reinforce their frenetic tyranny than to weaken it. Even so, if you don't demand justice, it will never happen. It's a conundrum, but if your reaction to this isn't that something at least approximating justice needs to happen, something is wrong with you.