With the worldwide open hostility from big chunks of population against tyrannical anti-Covid measures, more and more politicians are sensing that this is the moment when they have to make an U-turn and ride the wave of opening to a normal life. The same politicians that not even two months ago were hell bent fighting the virus. The politicians that they were thinking of QR codes as the new way of life. With restricted travel and endless quarantine rules. Everything based on their hand picked experts, of course. But now times are changing one more time, and hypocrisy at its finest started to flow.
Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, leading his fourth reign of power, thinks that now it's the time to be all again friends. And to forget that anything at all happened. And the Netherlands should "find its character again".
Well, for starters, I don't believe that the Netherlands lost its character in the first place. Actually during the last half of the year or so, the Netherlands strengthened its character, and found the audacity to question authoritarian flavored government measures. The Dutch people turned from complete trust in the government to a less positive attitude, and started to ask the right questions. And most of them, started to be fed up being taking for fools.
We're not going to reiterate here all the events during the last two years; you can read most of them on this blog, as well on other sources now all over the internet. But Rutte's government failed when they promised returned to a normal life if the people were willing just to take the vaccination by themselves; this didn't happen and by the end of 2021 new lockdowns and restrictions were in place. The government started a vicious campaign against non-vaccinated, trying in the first instance to blame them for new infection cases. This luckily failed quite soon here in the Netherlands, but other states (Austria) were not so lucky about. They ignored all the new evidence about the Omicron variant, and instead, chosen to label everyone anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and such. What's ironical, more and more of these theories from the last year are starting to come to light being not so far fetched anymore. But...
My call is now, to myself and to all people: let's visit each other again. Listen to each other. Stand by each other (Mark Rutte - interview with the AD)
Visit each other again? People started to do that long time ago, ignoring the random limits that the government was fixating in their counter-measures. They listen and stand by each others, asking themselves when this nonsense situation will actually finished. When the government will not just close businesses and deciding opening hours for the private sector like in a true socialist centralized economy.
‘When a monster shows up you have to look it in the eye,’ he said. ‘And that monster is the pandemic. And it could only be combated with severe measures.
Rutte is far from this knight in shinning armor, imagined by himself; and the monster was not the pandemic, but the faulty campaign against it. That this combat with severe measures were completely unnecessary and out of scope for most of the time. But for some reason, he thinks he did a great job. Really?! Not even some acknowledgement of some, maybe, some mistakes?
While conspiracy theories about vaccines and assaults on freedom gained widespread publicity, Rutte believed that most people understood why the rules were necessary.
… but the rules were necessary. I had no choice. And I think the vast majority of people understand that.
The vast majority of rules were utterly and complete bollocks. And of course, Rutte had choices. But he chosen to make the right one, for others, not for the his own people. Really, he doesn't even remember about how hard he fought for corona passes? How he sold the idea that everyone needs to get vaccines and boosters, and it's only a thin line before making the vaccines mandatory (which basically can be considered a crime against humanity).
A great leader will be proven when faced with difficult times; Rutte failed that game. A lot of people understand that now. In the last elections only around 20% voted for him. It took nine months to actually formed a government. He's not a winner, and quite the opposite, he needs to be held responsible for the created damage over the economical and social life.
He's not in the position to lecture us now about how to live our life. We know better than him. We always did.
The Netherlands has real problems here, like out of hand inflation, energy costs, housing bubble. But who will be able to look the monster in the eye now?!
