This Week in the New Normal

Via Off-Guardian

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

A somewhat later and somewhat briefer TWitNN this week, because in truth I was not planning on doing one at all, but then a couple of news stories caught my eye…

1. Ursula Von Der Leyen threatens Italian democracy

The Italian parliamentary elections are coming up, the favourite to win is the conservative right coalition led by ex-journalist Giorgia Meloni.

For those of you unfamiliar with Meloni, here she is giving a speech a few days ago:

The conservative coalition (labelled “far right” by the media, because everything is) has already come under fire from the head of the EU Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, who appeared to threaten the presumed incoming government during a press conference at Princeton University a few days ago, making reference to “tools” previously used against the governments Poland and Hungary:

“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,”

Although Meloni says some reasonable things above, she is pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine, and hardly any kind of outsider at all.

So, the cynical little voice on my shoulder is telling me this could all just be a manufactured controversy to make the EU look tough, and grant the incoming Italian PM some “anti-establishment” bona fides. It reeks of yet another fake binary.

But whether it’s genuine or all for show, the head of the EU ladling out threats to members because the “wrong” side won an election is a very bad look.

2. US makes it harder to question election results

This week the United States congress passed a new bill into law, one that makes it much, much harder to prevent the rigging of presidential elections.

Up until now the US electoral process was legislated by the Act, which dates back 1887. That act stated that all it took was a single representative to question the results of an election in order for it to be put before congress for re-examination.

The new law – named the Presidential Election Reform Act – would increase that from a single person to a full third of both houses.

According to the write-up on ABC News, the legislation was pushed through to prevent “election interference” from “election deniers” who are spreading “baseless claims of voter fraud”.

A more honest interpretation is that the US voting system is rigged to all hell, and they need safeguards in place to prevent any oversight or analysis of the voting process.

3. “Abolish the family”

A new book released this week, and reviewed in the New Statesman, calls for abolishing the traditional family unit in favour of, among other things, “communal” childcare (whatever that means).

The book, written by feminist academic Sophie Lewis and titled Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, appaarently argues that family units are a net negative for society, as they “privatise care” and “warp love and intimacy into abuse, ownership, scarcity”.

It’s not just bad for women, but children as well. Apparently kids need to be “liberated” from “the patriarchal family, from legal ownership, from economic dependency”. The alternative, vaguely proffered, is “communal” childcare.

They don’t use the word “state”, possibly studiously avoiding it, but that’s what she’s talking about. Collectivist state-run child-care units that stop parents “privatizing” their children.

The word “vaccination” isn’t used in the article either, but any renewed push of the old communist idea (mentioned in the article) of the “vast proletariat family” is almost certainly a direct response to the millions of responsible parents who refused to poison their children with unnecessary experimental “vaccines”.

Further, it all ties in with the ideas behind the Great Reset agenda. They don’t say “a great parenting reset”, but they come damn close [emphasis added]:

Burned out from pandemic parenting, facing immense childcare shortages and costs, women are leaving the workforce in record numbers, and in the US, forced birth and baby formula shortages are making crisis-parenting the rule, not the exception. The call for a revolutionary way of reconfiguring how we care for each other is more essential than ever, and Lewis’s manifesto is an irrepressible spark to our very tired imaginations.

In case you wondering, the reviewer loves it.

BONUS: Senior moment of the week

Joe Biden is just a doddery old man, and watching get wheeled out to be ritually humiliated is getting quite sad:

*

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the British teacher who got fired for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns.

-----------------------------------------------------
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)