{"id":20688,"date":"2022-01-28T10:45:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T15:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20688"},"modified":"2022-01-28T10:45:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T15:45:39","slug":"abuse-of-power-should-come-as-no-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2022\/01\/28\/abuse-of-power-should-come-as-no-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Abuse of Power Should Come As No Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

So. It appears as if maybe what will take down BoJo<\/a> is a bunch of smallish gatherings in violation of his government\u2019s lockdown rules from the first year of the pandemic. It does make me wish that someone had surveyed the people of the UK over that year, asking something like Do you think that high government officials, billionaires and other powerful individuals are following the government lockdown rules?<\/i> Absent such a survey and its actual result, I would guess the answer would be something like\u2026 oh, 25% responding yes? Maybe 20%?\r\n

Or a more specific question: do you think the Prime Minister has attended one or more social events in the last month that violates an applicable pandemic restriction?<\/i> Tho\u2019 for a question like that, of course, some people would say no, even if they thought he had, reasonably interpreting the question as really asking if they disliked the man.\r\n

Basically, though\u2014I find it difficult to believe it comes as a shock to anyone that the wealthy and powerful don\u2019t exactly follow the rules. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a particularly partisan thing, either. I wasn\u2019t surprised when Nancy Pelosi did, and I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if Ned Lamont did, either. It\u2019s certainly a little different in the UK where they were laws, rather than guidelines, with potential criminal penalties, but still.\r\n

I mean, it\u2019s outrageous that wealthy and powerful people break laws and social norms with impunity, yes. This is a problem with concentration of wealth and power, and it\u2019s absolutely something that should be part of our politics. But I find it difficult to be shocked, shocked to find that there were social gatherings in Downing Street.\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger doesn't reference Jenny Holzer enough, really.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20690,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20688\/revisions\/20690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}