How the progressive elites want to eliminate the undesirables and that might include you
Is it just me or does anyone else think the more politicians and celebrity influencers pretend to care about the disadvantaged, the more they justify measures that will quietly phase out the plebeian misfits they want to exclude from their vision of a greener, brighter and fairer world?
By greener the progressive elites mean with fewer useless eaters. Brighter and fairer may also imply the eradication of the unenlightened.
In little more than a hundred days, the new Labour administration in the UK has not only clamped down on dissent, released murderers and rapists to free up space in prisons and denied cash-strapped pensioners winter fuel payments; it is now letting MPs debate the Assisted Dying Bill on a slippery slope to eugenics.
It’s been sold to us as medically assisted life termination for the chronically ill and especially for the growing numbers of dementia patients in care homes, who would not survive without the wonders of modern medicine. To put things into context, the Alzheimer's Society’s Dementia 2019 report showed an increase from 75,000 people with dementia in care homes in 2001 to over 180,000 in 2019. Longer life expectancy, an ageing population and greater reliance on residential care can only account for part of that dramatic rise. While the total number of care home residents in England rose by around 23% between 2001 and 2017, the proportion of residents with dementia grew by nearly 150%, according to a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2020.
The BBC has long softened public opposition to mercy killing with many heart-wrenching documentaries about sufferers of debilitating conditions such as motor neurone disease who want to say their last goodbyes to friends and family before doctors help them transition peacefully to another world. While euthanasia is still, at the time of writing, against the law in all parts of the UK, some affluent citizens have travelled to the Swiss Dignitas centre to end their lives. During the second lockdown of late 2020, the former health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced severe restrictions on travel abroad, except for the purposes of assisted dying, prompted by his colleague, Andrew Mitchell, who argued perversely that new coronavirus regulations could deter people from travelling to Switzerland for an assisted death. This is the same MP who ushered Labour and Tory MPs out of the chamber before former MP Andrew Bridgen began his speech on covid-19 vaccine deaths and injuries and, as a mere coincidence, has had no qualms about being photographed alongside the WHO's largest corporate sponsor, Bill Gates.
If we look further afield to other Western countries like the Netherlands and Canada that have already legalised euthanasia, we see a clear trend. Once the public accepts the need to help the very old and frail die with dignity, well-funded charities lobby the government to expand the service to younger and younger adults with agonizing and seemingly untreatable physical and mental health conditions. In Canada, a woman with a history of depression and self-harm was offered Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAiD for short, instead of better social care. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, 29-year-old Zaraya ter Beek, allegedly on the autistic spectrum, became the youngest healthy adult to be granted the right to seek euthanasia, despite having a boyfriend and appearing in several awareness-raising documentaries.
What worries me most is the toxic influence of disheartening mainstream media narratives about apocalyptic climate change and online cults that prey on the vulnerable without real-life friends, but who identify with one or more existential psychological categories that separate them from general natural humanity. Establishment media outlets have taken great care to disown the wilder advocates of self-harm. Indeed, they often exploit the spectre of online disinformation and radicalisation to justify more censorship and thus to cover up inconvenient truths. The same laws that empower the state to block access to child porn can also deny access to truthful reports of heinous war crimes or corporate malpractice. While Facebook and Tiktok censored posts about covid-19 vaccine injuries, they have allowed countless groups promoting self-mutilation, extreme fasting and assisted dying. All you need is for an online influencer with a large following to announce that he and she is seeking help to transition to the next world.
End-of-life technology is fast evolving from rudimentary suicide pods to brain-computer interfaces that could soon do away with the need for a physical human body or, in a manner of speaking, upload someone’s consciousness to the cloud leaving only a brain in a jar hooked up to a network of computers. If you lack a sense of purpose and self-worth in your terrestrial life, the prospect of transitioning to a virtual existence is very tempting, even if you could easily vanish into thin air in the event of a random network fault or power outage.
The covid scare, with its widespread statistical manipulation and medical malpractice, set the stage for the normalisation of medically assisted homicide by highlighting the distinction between essential and non-essential workers. If you are deemed non-essential, then you may either comply or die. Concepts that would have, prior to 2020, been considered unconscionable have now become thinkable for the greater good of future generations.
Weasel words about cultural alignment and community values often serve to exclude anyone who cannot or will not conform with the emerging woke technocracy. Those who cannot adapt to this progressive Brave New World are being marginalised and guilt-tripped about their personal failings, leading inevitably to the proliferation of mental ill-health among the newly disenfranchised. This is what’s happening to millions of atomised young adults across the Western world dealing with job insecurity and volatile relationships, succumbing to drug addiction and comfort eating. Only this week we learned the government’s solution is to offer the unemployed obese weight loss injections, effectively making further social welfare contingent on their participation in clinical trials for Ozempic or Mounjaro, despite kidney dysfunction, hair loss and suicidal ideation being among their many side effects. The irony is that many long-term unemployed benefits claimants are on antipsychotics known to boost appetite and trigger rapid weight gain.
For decades, millions of us have had to contend with emotional conflicts between our natural bodily and psychological imperfections and media portrayals of shiny happy people performing at the top of their game. Soap operas can have in a similar effect to porn. They both provide grossly unrealistic representations of experiences we desire. We may crave exciting social lives, large villas with swimming pools and superlative bodies as much as the euphoria of erotic performances, but back in the real world few of us will ever approach the exuberance we see on TV or online. By attempting to achieve the unachievable, people can easily fall into despondency and fail to find partners who can live up to their fanciful expectations.
Despite all the technological advances of the last century, we have never been more dissatisfied with our lot in life. In the old world, we treated each new day of life as a blessing and coped with bodily imperfections with great humility. Today even minor disfigurements, without the emotional support of loved ones, can cause severe depression.
With the expansion of artificial intelligence and robotics, growing portions of the once essential workforce will become non-essential without a sense of purpose in life. The introduction of universal basic income will empower the state to link social credits with behavioural and ideological conformity. The scary part is that once you are locked into the corporate control grid with no bargaining power, the managerial classes can control every aspect of your private life and if you are, as George Bernard Shaw put it, more trouble than you are worth to the system, they can coerce you to agree to assisted early life termination. You may be excluded from mainstream society not because you have committed any crimes, but because of your lack of cultural alignment. Once excluded, your house arrest could be so unbearable that you opt for an easy way out.
Dying your own way
Some would argue that we need medically assisted suicide because of the immense success of modern medicine that has kept the chronically ill and mentally infirm on life support. In essence, we intervene to keep people artificially alive and also to facilitate a good death, but at all times medical experts stay in control. Yet many of us prefer to be masters of our own destiny, to live life to the full and then when our bodies or minds fail we let nature take its course.
When my mother retired to a small bungalow after her divorce, she told me repeatedly she wanted to stay there to the end of her days and never fancied ending up in a care home with no privacy or sense of dignity. Alas her mild dementia worsened considerably over the lockdowns and support workers advised us to transfer her to a specialist dementia care home at great expense. We need to ask serious questions about the rise in dementia patients. Indeed, at 88 my mother is among the oldest in her care home, the youngest being in her mid 60s. She is no longer able to make rational decisions about her life. Before moving in late 2022, she told me she didn’t want to bother anyone else and would much prefer just walking the streets alone and dying her own way and I understood her. In times of despair, I have myself considered seeking a way out by travelling to the nearest beach, undressing, swimming out to sea and leaving myself at the mercy of the elements. I never succeeded in this endeavour, because I usually changed my mind long before reaching the destination of my suicide attempt and despite periods of solitude would always encounter another human being giving me a reason to live. On one occasion I reached the River Thames at 3am and decided against diving in because I wanted to see how the spectacle of life would play out. But what if I had chosen instead to see a psychologist who, rather than persuade me to give life another chance, affirmed my despondency? I might not be here today.
Once we empower a legal guardian to agree to assisted death with best of intentions for all concerned, we have opened the floodgates to the extension of euthanasia to other target groups deemed unfit to inhabit the earth.
Addendum
I wrote a letter to my local MP, Graeme Downie, based on a template from Right To Life UK. After initially sending me a stock reply with platitudes about safeguards, I cited the Canadian and Dutch examples above. It later transpired he had blocked me on X. NewLabour do not debate, they only attempt to inculcate ideological conformity.
My message:
I'm contacting you as a concerned constituent of Dunfermline and Dollar to ask you to speak and vote in opposition to Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.
This is not the same as turning off life support machines or end-of-life care with strong sedatives for the terminally ill in cases where the choice might be between artificially extending someone's life for a few days or relieving excruciating pain.
Judging by developments in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, the legalisation of assisted dying will set us on a slippery slope to eugenics, open to wide-scale abuse especially with regard to the growing numbers of marginalised people with mentally health issues caused by atomisation. A 29-year old Dutch woman, Zoraya ter Beek, apparently on the autistic spectrum, has already chosen to end her life ( https://www.thefp.com/p/zoraya-ter-beek-dead-assisted-suicide ). Online peer pressure can easily affect vulnerable young people's sense of self-worth and may lead them to believe they\'re superfluous to requirements.
The risks of assisted suicide were movingly explored in the actor and disability rights campaigner Liz Carr’s recent BBC One documentary ‘Better Off Dead’ (https://youtu.be/gEysXRLTG5M?si=g3KFx2umghZyFOnq), which I would encourage you to watch.
The documentary warns of the dangers of assisted suicide legislation for people with disabilities and living in poverty. As observed in this article (https://labourlist.org/2024/01/euthanasia-assisted-dying-suicide-prue-leith-esther-rantzen/) by Sir Stephen Timms MP, we have seen such dangers sadly become reality in other countries despite the supposedly strict safeguards that were in place when ‘assisted dying’ was first legalised.
And Graeme Downie MP's brief reply:
Thank you for getting in touch with me about this matter. I will only make a final decision on my vote on this issue once I see the text of any proposed legislation but I want to be honest from the outset that, having been very heavily involved in campaigns on this issue in Scotland, I am minded to support a change in the law.
Successive governments, of both parties, have taken the position that the law on assisted suicide is a matter of conscience for individual MPs. The Prime Minister has confirmed that any change in the law on assisted dying will not happen via a Government Bill. A change can only be made via a Private Members’ Bill (PMB); that is a Bill introduced by a backbench MP or Peer.
In my view, if the law does change, it is vital that it also includes strong and proper safeguards. Furthermore, any reform should recognise the concerns that many people have, including those who support reform in principle, to try to achieve the widest possible consensus.
As your elected representative in Parliament, I will monitor developments in this area closely and bear in mind the points you have raised as it is important to generate a wide degree of viewpoints and knowledge ahead of debating such sensitive matters.
The implication here is that our learned MPs know best. Judging by the last 5 years of utter betrayal over health matter, with Labour taking even more extreme stances on medical mandates than the Tories, I have my sincere doubts on their integrity to hold powerful lobbies to account. My final reply remains unanswered.
Did you read my email? We are not talking about edge cases where someone is on a life support machine or is terminally ill experiencing excruciating pain with days to live. We are talking about developments across the Western World to normalise assisted suicide for the marginalised long before the onset of extreme old age or frailty, making people feel superfluous to requirements because they are not socially integrated with a sense of purpose.
This is a very slippery slope, but in Canada a woman with a history of depression was offered MAIDs: https://care.org.uk/news/2023/08/canadian-woman-with-depression-offered-assisted-suicide-after-lack-of-hospital-beds .
Is that the future you want for your constituents ? Can you not detect authoritarian trends ?