There are crazier ideas than harsh, indefinite lockdowns to fight the coronavirus. One was proposed by a bioethics professor: Put mind controlling hormones in the water supply to make people more cooperative.

Conspiracy theorists who oppose the fluoridation of drinking water claim that fluoride is added not to strengthen teeth but to allow for mind control. According to the "theory," fluoride damages the brain and makes a person more susceptible to control by others, like the government. Of course, it's complete nonsense.

But now, thanks to a medical ethics professor, conspiracy theorists can point to a real person who really suggested fighting coronavirus by tainting the water supply with a chemical that makes people more cooperative. In other words, he thinks a benevolent form of mind control could help us defeat COVID-19. Here are excerpts of what Prof. Parker Crutchfield wrote in The Conversation:

But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body's ability to fight off disease but the brain's ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

...

Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it. As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. [Emphasis added]

Let's set aside the fact that this is bat s#!t crazy and focus on two gigantic problems.

First, administering a mind-altering substance to a person without his knowledge or consent is highly unethical. It boggles my mind that an ethicist could come to any other conclusion. (Funnily enough, he cites himself when he claims that "some have argued" that moral enhancement should be administered secretly.)

Second, we already have tested extensively drugs that are supposed to alter thoughts and behavior. They're called antidepressants. And a lot of them suck. For some people, antidepressants are no better than placebo or have only modest effects. The same would almost certainly be true of "moral enhancers" like the hormone oxytocin. There's also the problem of side effects, which the author does acknowledge.

Did they hit too close to home?

Twitter has seemingly gone on a rampage against anti-"woke" satirists, locking the account of social justice warrior caricature Titania McGrath and suspending several others for reasons that remain unclear.

Several satire accounts, mostly British, ridiculing society's obsession with political correctness, found themselves locked out of Twitter or suspended entirely on Monday, with no explanation other than vague accusations of "platform manipulation and dissemination of spam."

Incumbent Lois Frankel and social media firebrand Laura Loomer won their respective primaries Tuesday, setting the tone for what will be a fiery, nationally watched congressional election in November.

Frankel, a former West Palm Beach mayor seeking her fifth term in U.S. House District 21, beat newcomer Guido Weiss by a landslide to win the Democratic nomination. Frankel captured 86.40% of the votes to Weiss' 13.60%.

"Every election night is exciting, no matter how many times you are in it," Frankel said Tuesday night from her home in West Palm Beach.

While Frankel was celebrating her quick win, Loomer was surrounded by an all-star cast of conservative and far-right leaders toasting her win in the GOP primary.

Among those gathering to watch returns with Loomer were political strategist Roger Stone, British writer Milo Yiannopoulos and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.


Even President Donald Trump weighed in on Loomer's victory via Twitter.

"Great going Laura," he wrote. "You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!"

In what it calls an effort to make itself "a more reliable source for election-related news and information," YouTube has announced that it will be removing "content that contains hacked information, the disclosure of which may interfere with democratic processes, such as elections and censuses."

"For example, videos that contain hacked information about a political candidate shared with the intent to interfere in an election," adds the Google-owned video sharing platform.

President Trump said Tuesday he would grant a full pardon posthumously to Susan B. Anthony, a famed women's rights advocate who played a critical role in the women's suffrage movement.

Trump made the announcement during a ceremony Tuesday morning celebrating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in the United States.

Anthony was found guilty in 1873 by a completely male jury for having illegally voted in the November 1872 presidential election and was fined $100.

A veteran and business owner living in Shasta County, California is completely fed up with the authoritarian Covid lockdown orders so he gave a stern warning to the Board of Supervisors.

Residents and business owners last week held a rally outside of the Board of Supervisors chamber and demanded Shasta County re-open and lift its ridiculous mask mandate.

Shasta County officials however pointed the finger at Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.

Compliance is not enough. Popular actor Laurence Fox, interviewed on New Culture Forum, said that despite wearing a mask in shops and on public transport, he is still being criticised. You shouldn't complain, he is told. Instead, you should feel happy. A mask shows that you care, purportedly, and that you are a good person - unlike those ignoramuses and conspiracy theorists who recklessly and selfishly endanger others. As Fox perceives, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to display moral superiority.

Masks have become a fault line in the culture war. Laws and the threat of fines force the majority of people to comply, but there is a thinly veiled contrast between those who want to wear them and those who dislike this excessive response to a mostly mild upper respiratory tract infection. The divide is heavily influenced by social class and ideology.

French police have urged people to be on the lookout for criminals who have been going around farms and meadows mutilating horses, mostly while alive, taking body parts for unknown reasons.

About 15 horses have been found dismembered across the country in recent months, most recently near Lyon in the east, where a mare that had died of natural causes was discovered Monday with its nose, an ear and an eye removed.

Last week, in the Jura region also in the east, a horse was stunned before having an eye gouged out and a piece of bone removed, according to local radio. It later died.

What becomes of government credibility in the post-lockdown period? There are thousands of politicians in this country for whom this is a chilling question, even a taboo topic.

The reputation of government was already at postwar lows before the lockdowns, with only 17% of the American public saying that they trusted government to do the right thing. That was before the federal government and 43 state governors decided to turn a virus into a pretext for totalitarian closures, lockdowns, travel restrictions, and home quarantines of most people.

The lockdowns and random policy impositions by government will surely contribute to take the confidence number down to rock bottom. Already, loss of confidence has devastated consumer sentiment. No matter how many headlines blame the virus for all the carnage, the reality is all around us: it's the government's response that bears the responsibility.

In 2006, the great epidemiologist Donald Henderson warned that if government pursued coercive measures to control a virus, the result would be a "loss of confidence in government to manage the crisis." The reason is that the measures do not work. Further, the attempt to make them work turns a manageable crisis into a catastrophe.

Prophetic.

In a disturbing revelation, Australian authorities have arrogated themselves the power to remove children from the care of their parents over coronavirus fears as the country is forced to levelling degrees of lockdown, depending on the state.

The act which was proposed as a temporary measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in what has been considered an emergency.

According to the Australian Christian outlet Caldron Pool:

Schedule 2 of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act 2020 lists temporary modifications of particular State Laws. Under Part 1, amendments to the Emergency Response Act 2004 are outlined.

The Emergency Response Act 2004 is enacted to "establish strategies and systems for management of emergencies in the State; and for other purposes."

Section 24-26, which is classified as Division 4 of the Act, lists the powers that may be executed in relation to "declared emergencies."

Under Section 24A, an emergency is defined as the following:

"An emergency may be declared to be an identified major incident, a major emergency or a disaster whether or not the emergency has previously been declared to be a public health incident or a public health emergency under the South Australian Public Health Act 2011."