The Public Must Be Compensated

Political partisans have been trying to claim that Sweden’s Public Health authority, fronted by Anders Tegnell, is unique in pursuing a “cruel” herd immunity goal. It is a bald lie. Herd immunity to COVID-19 is the end-game for all decisionmakers in public health, including in the authoritarian-coalition NPI (Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention, AKA mass, indefinite Isolation and Immobilization) response designed by Biosecurity experts (See the FOIA’d Red Dawn emails in the New York Times).

The difference from Sweden’s democratic-scientific approach to the pandemic is that the authoritarian coalition’s NPI Mass Isolation & Immobilization approach allows the security state to practice implementing population lockdown (Red Dawn emails discuss this goal, along with testing the internet.), while technocratic epidemiologists are thrilled to be using societies as laboratories (See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing.html). All the “early”/”late” implementation discourse in the media is scientistic nonsense typically used to sell Biosecurity indefinite mass house arrest, as opposed to a testing-forward, selective-isolation policy that no coalition has emerged to champion within the authoritarian societies.

But we must start focusing on the bait dangled by the authoritarian-coalition strategy. The avalanche of economic, social and health costs it unleashes cannot be worth the golden carrot swaying before the manhandled public: an immunization crafted over 18 months for one (1) version of coronavirus, where novel coronaviruses develop repeatedly. (A new avian flu, the Red Dawn biosecurity experts noted, had developed in China early this year even while COVID-19 was taking the spotlight.)

Colonization and the Abject Female Supervillain

During the period of mass-Christian semi-conversion managed by Olafr Tryggvason, Icelandic saga writers borrowed from Celtic folklore the meme of the super-powered female antagonist. But this was not a stock Nordic character, and so the Icelandic writers turned these Celtic villains into trolls.

Reading Norse folks tales both old and new, it seems to me that trolls, in the materialist Nordic forest cultures, are a disrespectful way to depict people within Nordic society who, from either elite or hoi poloi perspective, exhibit antisocial qualities and brutishness. Grendl and his mother, for example, were trying to beat back and protect themselves from a community of vicious marauders. From the imperial victor’s point of view, effective indigenous counteroffensives are monstrous.

Troll literally just means magic. “Magic,” as Lucy Lawless clarified when repeatedly asked about Xena Princess Warrior writing inconsistencies, demands suspension of disbelief. Magic means we’re skipping over glaring issues, hopefully to get something evocative across, but often just to get some tendentious propaganda across.

Trolls aren’t really outsiders. They’re big, ugly, thuggish, irresponsible and dangerous people who live next to and interact with the human or  protagonists a lot. Often trolls are distinguished by long noses, for example, a trait that tends to crop up now and again in aging Scandinavian people anyway. Modern author Rolf Lidberg’s relateable trolls are clearly just common folk.

Trolls and people tend to marry or morph into each other over the course of some folk stories. Protagonists, including when they seem very much to be representing the beleaguered youngest member of a family audience, are depicted as underappreciated princesses and princes, while in some stories, characters that start out as talking animals end up being princes. So there’s a lot of fluidity there, between behaviour and metaphorical nature, and unsurprisingly there’s a clear tendency to both compensatory and hyperbolic representation in these folktales.

Usually the mighty Icelandic troll ladies were slain by the saga hero, though sometimes they were spared in exchange for treasure, or befriended, as in the case of Brana & Halfdan, according to Martin Puhvel (1987, McGill).

Normal females powered by vengeance played the boss villain role in Celtic folklore, and usually it took the help of an animal, such as a dog, for the male hero to defeat them. Cats were associated with the abjected feminine and villainous hags, the cailleach (Puhvel 1987).

As Silvia Federici documented (1998), the crippling fear of women is often the result of instrumental, imperial-cosmopolitan divide-and-conquer interventions imposed upon hinterlands communities. Eleanor Hull’s research (1927) showed that female Celtic supernatural villains like banshees and various evil, watery tarts were degenerate  descendants of ancient, mighty war goddesses like Macha and Bodb.

A Shining Neoliberal City on the Hill, Belly Up

“Last year the Heritage Foundation declared Ireland the third freest economy in the world, behind only Hong Kong and Singapore.
…
The Irish government now predicts that this year G.D.P. will fall more than 10 percent from its peak, crossing the line that is sometimes used to distinguish between a recession and a depression.
…
And the lesson of Ireland is that you really, really don’t want to put yourself in a position where you have to punish your economy in order to save your banks.”

From Krugman, Paul. 2009. “Erin Go Broke.” The New York Times, April 19.