Countries that once supported open borders and civic nationalism are finding out, VERY much the hard way, that you can take the barbarian out of the tribe – but you damned well cannot take the tribe out of the barbarian:

While French Covid-19 lockdown rules declare fines of nearly €4,000 for citizens repeatedly flouting quarantine, a secretary of state has reportedly admitted poor, gang-riddled suburbs will be left to their own devices.

As President Macron declared France at war with the coronavirus, public health officials and those on the frontline applauded what looked like decisive leadership… but the reality is a hotchpotch of Gallic double standards that undermine any attempts to put a lid on the spread of Covid-19.

Because French police understand that they don’t have much chance of enforcing the draconian measures on freedom of movement with which everyone in France is expected to comply on those citizens living in the poverty-stricken banlieues that outly the larger French cities.

As the emergency services union Synergie-Officiers pointed out on Twitter: “It is illusory to think that certain individuals in ‘sensitive neighborhoods’ comply with good citizenship in the state of the current legislation.”

The accompanying video shows two police vainly trying to disperse a growing gang of youths as the threat level creeps higher.

[h/t our beloved and dreaded Supreme Dark Lord (PBUH) for the link]

It is not merely diverse vibrants making things difficult for people in France, either. Inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom who moved over to Western countries have plainly shown that their loyalties lie with the motherland, not with their new nations. And while there is no call for outright discrimination against Chinese people in general, there is also no good reason to trust them right now either, thanks to their own actions in the face of a massive global economic and health crisis:

The idea that we could all simply overlook very real and irreducible differences in mindset, culture, morality, and especially trust within and around different tribes and nations was always the central and founding lie of civic nationalism. And that lie has now been utterly exposed.

In future years, once the plague subsides and the world calms the hell back down a bit, and people realise just how badly we overreacted by trying to save mostly Ye Olde Phartes by shutting the entire damn economy down, I suspect that a good many historians and anthropologists are going to look back upon what happened and marvel at the sheer stupidity that was allowed to take place in the years and decades leading up to 2020.

In addition, though, I think that people are going to look at the very different ways in which various nations reacted, adapted, and overcame, and they will be forced to come to a (seemingly) startling conclusion:

High trust societies can deal with the social devastation wrought by a plague far, far better than low trust ones can.

Look at America right now. There are over 105,000 confirmed infections – and given that we know that the infection rate of Corona-chan is only about 20% under absolutely optimal conditions, that number is about one-fifth of the likely actual total of around 500,000.

Yet the mortality rate is only about 1.5%.

Why? Well, there are any number of factors at play, not the least of which is the unreliability of the data sets involved. We cannot be sure of any of the numbers, from anywhere in the world. Each country counts its infections and deaths differently.

For instance, the Italians have been hit the worst by far – 86,500 confirmed infections and over 9,000 deaths, for a mortality rate of nearly 11%. But their mortality rates are almost certainly too high, because they count everyone who died with the infection as a death due to Corona-chan.

But this plainly doesn’t make sense. If a cancer patient dies in an oncology ward due to an aggressive tumour, and just so happens to test positive for COVID-19, for whatever reason, did he actually die because of a coronavirus infection? Obviously not – yet he is counted as a statistic in the Corona-chan column and not the cancer column.

So the Italian, Spanish, and probably British numbers are almost certainly too high. And the Chinese and Iranian numbers are absolute bullshit – both countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes who lie by habit and cannot be trusted, because they are too terrified about losing respect and authority.

In fact, the Chinese regime has already lost a significant chunk of its authority over the people – you won’t hear much about this from the lying whorenalists of the mainstream (((media))), but there are riots going on in China right now in Hubei Province, centred around Wuhan itself.

What about the American numbers? Are they accurate?

Based on what I’m seeing from around the world, my guess is that they are not. It is entirely possible that people are underestimating the number of deaths involved in the USA, especially in New York F***ing Shitty.

Nonetheless, there is still no particular reason for panic beyond the current quarantine periods. I do think that things will start to turn around in the next week – indeed, there is already evidence that things are turning around right now, and that the crisis is nowhere near as bad as we initially thought.

And that is because, at least in America, people are lucky enough to live in a high-trust society.

This is not common around the world. You kind of have to do some traveling to realise just how uncommon high-trust societies actually are. Most Western countries these days are not high-trust places.

What does it mean to be a “high-trust” society? Well, it’s pretty simple if you bring it down to the level of you and your neighbour.

If you loan your neighbour a stepladder or a lawnmower or a chainsaw, you can be about 80% certain, thereabouts, that it will be returned to you promptly, in about the same condition it was when you loaned it out, and with a smile of gratitude and a handshake.

That’s basically about 80-90% of America, with the large and notable exceptions of the big cities like NYFC, LA, SF, and Portland.

If, however, you live in a country where people will simply refuse to let you borrow a single damned thing, then you probably live in a low-trust society. And if you ask someone why nobody ever allows anyone else to borrow anything, and you are told that only idiots lend out anything to anyone else, then you know you live in a low-trust society.

China is a low-trust society. India is a very low-trust society. Pretty much every single Arab nation is an extremely low-trust society.

How are those nations responding?

Honestly… not that well.

How is America responding?

Pretty darned well, so far, judging by what we’ve seen so far.

And that is because, despite the massive wave of unprecedented immigration over the past 50 years, America remains a relatively high-trust nation. That wave of immigration has, fortunately, been concentrated mostly in the big cities, which is a big part of the reason why those same cities are proving to be such hotbeds for Corona-chan’s infestation.

Future historians will also probably note that a lot of formerly high-trust nations have turned into low-trust nations during the current crisis. France is the sterling example of this, but Britain isn’t all that far behind, and neither is Canada.

The consequences of Corona-chan’s spread are going to reverberate for decades to come. It is my cherished hope – and that is probably all it is, for now – that people will finally wake up and realise that the Chinese government absolutely cannot be trusted, and that the Chinese people, for all of their excellent personal qualities, are not compatible with Western values.

Expecting people to come from the Middle Kingdom to the Western world and suddenly become Westerners is idiotic beyond belief. It is the Magic Dirt fallacy writ large, and one of the radically positive consequences of Corona-chan – though it doesn’t seem that way right now – is the ruthless and brutal defenestration of such utter stupidity.

Identity defeats ideology, every single time, and – to quote a certain retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army with a distinct fondness for crucifying people he doesn’t like, “survival cancels out programming”.