What began as a typical excuse to moralize about China's repressive response to the virus, has turned into the performative meaning of being for overly regulated and hopeless liberal societies that had lost their traditional political and moral authority.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

At the beginning of the pandemic when the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China, Western liberal democracies were unambiguous about their condemnation of the repressive measures China was using to control the spread of the virus—a locked-down city, people isolated for weeks in their apartments, the isolation, lack of access to medical care. As an article in the New York Times put it, “China Tightens Wuhan Lockdown in 'Wartime' Battle with Coronavirus”:

At that time, according to the prevailing moralizing in the liberal West, China's reaction was 'improvised', 'increasingly extreme', 'makeshift', relying on 'quarantine camps' that hearkened back to a dark time of the 20th century.

The article argued, rationally, that a lot of the people being relocated into improvised stadiums for quarantine had pre-existing conditions that needed treatment: “Alot of these people have underlying health problems that need to be cared for”, argued the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Similarly, the measures being undertaken by the Communist party to restrict public discourse left a chilling impression: “the Communist party has moved to stifle news organizations and social media platforms”. The article ended with the following clear innuendo that what was happening in China in the name of fighting COVID was an illegitimate violation of the freedoms of civil society expected in the liberal West.

At that time, way back on February 6th, 2020, the narrative around China's response to COVID, which was basically the only narrative on COVID at the time, was the traditional one with respect to China: an opportunity for moralizing about freedoms in the West that provided cover for the more fundamental project of liberalizing China's economy and fostering a better business environment for Western corporations. At that time, in the West, the common, and justifiable reaction to this moralizing was that it was disingenuous or racist. Countering this hypocrisy took the form of the (probably reckless, in retrospect) argument that Western countries were so dysfunctional they would never be able to deal with such a pandemic if it ever arrived at their borders.

This was just after January 6 in the United States, after yet another debacle of a primary and election in which once again some bizarre confluence of tattered, desperate forces had allowed an aging gerontocracy to cling to power. Out of ideas, with no vision for the future, illegitimate in the eyes of basically everyone under 55, and with a President intimating he was willing to undermine the validity of the election results and to foment a coup to remain in power, the country was seriously in a state of cartoonish disarray. Among progressives at that time, it was a King Lear comedy of the absurdity of everything, willfully wishing for the forces of nature to strike down upon the world in an expression of the divine justice of the meaningless of existence: The United States and other moralizing Western countries didn't have the balls, the sanity, or the legitimacy to deal with a pandemic. Perhaps these corrupt octogenarians could cling to power for yet another election cycle, but their crony capitalist conniving politics surely would crumble in the face of a deadly global pandemic.

LOL.

We all know now, after nearly 2-years of unending hysteria, restrictions, travel bans, lock-downs, curfews, quarantines, misery and suffering, isolation, loneliness, suicide, depression, and hopelessness that liberal governments are in fact a match for China. The current situation, in this context, rather looks like a kind of self-reinforcing performative competition among liberal democracies to signal to one-another the extent to which they are capable of producing the sorts of obedient, governable citizens necessary for successfully surviving a deadly pandemic. This is a performance that is about colonial legitimacy and belonging: among the Anglo-Saxon colonial projects, it is Canada and Australia that have staked their claim to belonging among the competent liberal bureaucracies through the enforcement of liberal countries' most draconian vaccination mandates and the construction of the worlds first COVID detention centers¹. But it is more fundamentally about a performance oriented towards the liberal democratic ideal through which the colonial validation itself is accomplished.

Even a brief look into the daily life of Canada, for instance, reveals a country infused from top to bottom, coast to coast with a level of COVID obedience that hinges on the pathological. Just listen to the Quebec premier Legault announcing new restrictions on holiday gatherings (now limited to 10 vaccinated people), a 50% capacity rule for restaurants and bars where only the vaccinated may dine or drink, the “banning” of dancing, voluntary work-from-home, increased testing, and the prospect of an incredible militarized panic to boost the waning vaccination of all of its citizens before the Omicron wave arrives. Using a gathering at a restaurant where almost 40-people had become 'contaminated', it was the premier himself that, although he was there to announce the reinstatement of harsh containment measures, was the most sane in the room. The press, on the other hand, reflected the mindset of the population: demands for assurances that a ban on the unvaccinated from attending church services would be enforced by police, concern that more hadn't been done sooner, that more wasn't being done, why were children not being vaccinated faster, why would schools open again in January considering the wave would foreseeably still be around, and the repeated innuendo that the press was all the time looking for assurances that another curfew and full lock-down and quarantine of the citizenry was also still in the cards².

Already, before the pandemic, Canada was a dreary, hopeless secondary Balkan nation in the penumbra of global liberal civilization. Not at the fore-front of power and defining global culture like its North American neighbor the United States, and also not really fully part of Europe (France, for the Quebecois) or the United Kingdom and Commonwealth (for the English-speaking majority), Canada had to be content with an existence much in the same vein of Sweden: a kind of existential resignation where the only meaning can be derived from a kind of silent religious assumption of societal obligation. Consider the traffic management in that country. Coming from the United States, its immediately almost comical how slow one has to drive. And as one drives, even on the highways, the speed one travels at is set in such a way that it is one's speed that is always on one's mind: i.e., how deliberately and artificially slow one must go. Similarly with traffic lights and stop signs: put on every corner, and designed to be red once you have past even just one, one is forced to give up on the idea that one has any real freedom on the roads. Traffic management in Canada leads to a form of hopelessness and resignation whereby one no longer even eventually believes it is reasonable to have the right to drive with what becomes recast as the reckless abandon of high-speed liberty. In fact, once in the United States, Canadians seem to resent the fact that they have to once again drive with any kind of intentionality on the road, their form of over-regulated life having removed from them the responsibility of having to make risky choices and assessments with moral consequences. What thus happens is that a strange emotional investment in the justification for the regulations begins to take shape. Rather than taking issue with the rules themselves, critique becomes displaced onto those others that violate the rules: solidarity with authority becomes the only way of preserving a sense of agency³.

The point is that before the pandemic arrived in Canada it was already an over-regulated liberal purgatory who's only sense of national pride arose from the ways in which obligation could become an expression of fulfilling the ideals of liberal democracy. It was already a dishonest escape fantasy that expressed itself as a tattle-tale culture of total unaccountability. With its national healthcare system and federal government that still manages to cobble together a multi-cultural, multi-linguistic society, a whole host of strange performative political practices have arisen in Canada that allow this precarious assemblage to persist (e.g., the way, in this pandemic, that Quebec has been the first to impose restrictions so as to prevent the appearance of having them imposed by English-speaking provinces that would foment Parti Quebecois secessionism). Now, however, with the pandemic, Canada's smug, lying self-satisfaction finds its most full expression in the globalized performance of competence that the pandemic has created. And all of its citizenry (or at least an overwhelming and unbelievable majority of it, seemingly) has so far gleefully, dutifully, and self-righteously done whatever has been asked of them in the name of 'public health'. What began for them with Donald Trump and a rejection of his 'barbaric' form of politics, formed the beginnings of a newly-found sense of self-definition in Canada that has now metastasized into an entire population certain they are among the best of all the little lines on the chart.

This is not unique to Canada. The same is true for Australia with its COVID detention centers, little white vans driving around collecting any individuals identified on their smartphone app as having come into contact with a dirty 'infected': it is a faraway prison colony that has tamed the Outback and that now claims its title at the top of the civilized developed Western world, ready for the new century at the meeting point of East and West. Look at the tiny little island of shutdown and nationally quarantined New Zealand with their mandates and travel-restrictions unmatched anywhere on earth: as Immigration New Zealand says, “The border is currently closed to almost all travelers to help stop the spread of COVID-19”, FOR ALMOST 2-YEARS. Even within the Unites States the same dynamic has played out between red and blue states. To this day, and despite all the evidence that red states like Florida and Texas, who have now no restrictions at all, have fared better than their blue counterparts, the performance of liberal statehood in West Coast states like California and East Coast liberal New York everyday becomes the obvious way in which they claim legitimacy and upon which they explicitly stake their political future.

In this sense, the liberal Western world has become a reflection of everything it criticized at the beginning of the pandemic. Now it is their own censorship and repression that becomes an expression of a new, transformed liberal ideal. Rather than being an ideal defined by its freedoms, it has become an ideal defined by its obligations. The moralizing of liberal democracies was always an expression of its most dishonest, rancid core. Now, it seems like that moralizing has, rather than any longer seeking to reshape the world according to what has become its discredited pretense to freedom and democracy, has become rather a complex form of global performance through which an internal fetishization of moral concern for saving every Schindler COVID life produces an escape from the hopeless despair and dysfunction of regulated pre-pandemic obligation. It is in this sense that the lack of purpose and legitimacy that existed across the Western liberal world at the end of 2020 has found its most profound meaning for being in the pandemic. Which is to say: that it is not only within liberal societies that the morality of pandemic regulations deliver lost citizens from the meaninglessness of existing within them, but it is also through the competition among liberal nations to demonstrate their fulfillment of the liberal ideal among themselves that the entire world becomes caught-up in a process whereby those willing to accept the vaccine form the collective global liberal clique to the exclusion of those that are unwilling or unable that amplifies their own collective need to enforce it further⁴.

Whether or not the features of the performance point to a geopolitical rehearsal for the future of biological/technological conflict and demonstration of preparedness, whether they reflect opportunism on the part of liberal elites to reconstitute their previously dwindling control, or whether or not the entire situation is just a regrettable mix of over-reaction-under-pressure-using-improvised-means is not yet clear. What is clear though, is that this global transformation is connected to a profound loss of meaning in liberal societies that was already evident before the pandemic and that the pandemic now has, by intensifying them through isolating restrictions, made them even more reliant on the performances of the liberal state ideal that now finds in the global COVID pandemic an amphitheater to stage its collective performance thereby liberating impulses confined to singular nation states into the global.

Unless, of course, we are all caught in a temporal pincer movement.

Footnotes