My school makes me do PSHE lessons – that’s an acronym for Personal, social, health and economic education. First explained to me, it sounded like fun. The reality is that it’s the usual boring fraud that is education in modern Britain. I get to sit through four whole lessons every week, listening to some leftist freak drone about climate change or how bus queues are racist. The other week, we were given an essay to throw together at the end of the class, in which we had to write what democracy meant to us. I wrote at brief but sufficient length. Imagine an ugly, fat creature, with a nose ring and bad breath, having a stroke – that’s a fair summary of the feedback I got.

However, I thought it was rather a good essay, if not very long. Since I’m busy for the next day with annotating Book II of The Aeneid for Dr Gabb, you’ll need to get by with some recycled school work.

The West’s Great Scam: How Democracy Lets the Worst People Off the Hook
Bryan Mercadente

We’re told we live in a democracy, which is supposed to mean we’re in charge. But if you look a bit closer, it’s really just a system where a small group of people runs everything from out of sight. Democracy in its original Athenian sense really was rule by the people. The Assembly of citizens made all the decisions in open meetings. Most officers in the Athenian system of government were chosen by lot from among the citizens. In short, Athens had rule by the people – or rule by male citizens, which would be good enough for me. Our version of democracy just has two or three teams that take turns robbing us and oppressing us, and we get to feel important by putting a cross in a box every few years. No matter who wins, the same people stay rich, the same people stay powerful, and when something goes horribly wrong, no one is ever to blame.

Compare this to China. That isn’t quite a one-man dictatorship, but there is one man who is publicly in charge. The people never elected him, but when things go wrong, he takes the blame. There’s no election to let people pretend things might get better next time. It’s all on him. If things go really badly, there’s a risk of very real consequences for him.

Now, let’s talk about disasters. Vioxx was a painkiller marketed about twenty years ago in America that turned out to kill people. The company that made it, Merck, knew it was dangerous, but carried on selling it anyway. The American government – which promised to keep the people safe – did nothing until tens of thousands of people had already died. When the truth came out, Merck paid a fine and carried on as usual. No one went to prison. No one got properly punished. Because in a system like ours, accountability is for little people.

But Vioxx was just a warm-up. COVID-19 was the big one. First, they lied to us about how dangerous the virus was. They locked us in our houses, wrecked the economy, and terrified people into thinking that if they stepped outside, they’d drop dead. Then, once we were scared enough, they rolled out the miracle vaccines. Only they weren’t miracles. They didn’t work properly. Worse than that, they were dangerous. People fell dead after taking them, and the people in charge shrugged and said, ‘nothing to see here.’ They even gave the drug companies immunity from lawsuits – which tells you everything you need to know.

Luckily, I was never stupid enough to get vaccinated. Even better, I talked my family out of it too. If I achieve nothing else in life, I’ll always know I was a good son just for that. As an aside, I should feel outraged about the vaccine scam. The truth is that I have a long mental list of people I know got vaccinated. None of them has died yet. I feel bad about that. It’s like going to all the trouble of buying a Death Note writing book on Amazon, only to discover that it doesn’t work.

But here’s the sorriest truth: imagine China had done this. Imagine the Chinese government had forced dodgy vaccines on everyone, then covered it up when people started dying. The West would be screaming about human rights abuses. There would be sanctions. There would be UN investigations. But when it’s Pfizer and Moderna making billions from a vaccine that doesn’t work and might kill you? No one’s responsible. No one even loses their job. The media moves on to the next thing, and we’re all supposed to forget it ever happened.

In China, when something like this happens, heads roll. Sometimes literally. But in the West? The politicians keep their bribes, the drug companies keep their profits, and we’re expected to trust them all over again when the next ‘crisis’ comes along. And we will, because the system is designed to keep us distracted. Give it a few months, and they’ll have everyone panicking about the next invisible enemy. Another virus, another war, another ‘threat to democracy.’ The cycle repeats, and the same people get richer while the rest of us get poorer.

Western democracy isn’t about freedom, or even basic competence. It’s a scam pulled by an obscenely rich, mostly hidden ruling class, designed to make us think we have a say in things when we don’t. The elections are theatre, the politicians are puppets, and the only rule that really matters is this—whatever happens, they win, and we lose.