Today
at work, I spent much of the day muttering to myself about the bastards who
have shut down large swathes of America for no reason, and the other bastards
(the ones I thought were on my side), doing nothing about it. With the mask on, no one can hear. If they could, they would probably be
dragging me away.
At this
point, there can be no conceivable reason for further restrictions, and yet
they remain in place. The original
rationale offered ten weeks ago for shutting schools and colleges, all sports
and cultural events and churches, and throwing tens of millions out of work was
always questionable, especially since no discussion of it was permitted. “Flattening the curve,” they said---relieving
pressure on our healthcare system before it could be overwhelmed by the ‘rona. OK, well that didn’t happen, and not only did
it not happen but we have learned that the shutdowns were never going to
flatten anything anyway. A number of
studies from around the world have confirmed what some of us suspected from the
beginning---curves don’t get flattened and the number of cases a particular
area experiences follows the same pattern regardless of the level of government
restrictions imposed or not imposed. The
lockdowns have served no public health function. All they have done is impoverish the healthy
and the innocent.
The
only rational course of action for our overlords now is a decree ending all
shelter-in-place edicts and policed lockdowns, allowing free people to live
their lives as they see fit, taking whatever precautions they deem appropriate
for themselves and their families.
There
is no longer any justification for the restrictions; there is literally no
public health argument that can fairly be made.
The patterns everywhere are the same, and there have been no “second
waves” despite the apocalyptic warnings of all our “experts.” Somehow, we all survived people in Georgia getting
haircuts and tattoos.
Yet not
only do the autocrats and bullies who authored these policies continue to
enforce them and even extend them, there is virtually no political conservative
who will even argue with them. At most,
the quislings in Congress and the conservative media will try to nibble around
the edges of this policing regimen. “Well,
maybe we should allow 25 people to assemble now, so long as they wear masks, of
course.” “Well, we can’t open
restaurants, of course, but with the right disinfecting procedures, we ought to
allow hair salons to reopen some time in August.” “Well, OK, you can play baseball but no one
can watch. And no spitting! And we’ll have to take everybody’s
temperature before every game.”
NO! The only correct answer is NO! Open up the gyms and the ballparks and the
restaurants and the swimming pools and the schools. NOW!
And if there are people who don’t want to go to a baseball stadium with
fans in the seats, fine. No one is
forcing them to go. No one ever forced them to go.
Remember? At first, there will be plenty of people who still isolate
themselves, especially because of all the virus-terror that has been pounded
into all of us over the past months, but gradually public venues will begin to
fill up again as people re-evaluate the risks in a way that is realistic and
appropriate for them. It may be a while
before an 86-year-old with a compromised immune system goes to a hockey game,
but that’s OK. That’s the way it should
be. In a free society, one size never
fits all.
Why is
this happening? Why are the restrictions
still in place? Why are ministers and
gym owners being threatened with massive fines and imprisonment and property
seizures? Why must tens of millions be
driven into penury and despair?
Because
this is not about the virus anymore.
Corona
was the reason in the beginning, I think, at least to some extent. The initial justification of flattening the
curve was plausible if you didn’t think too deeply about it, and we were not
permitted to think about it even a little bit.
There was no public debate at all.
The policing regimen was just dropped upon us, suddenly, without
warning. It was an emergency, you see.
In the
beginning, besides the virus, there were other reasons motivating the bullies
and other aspects of our culture that prevented us from seeing what was
happening until it was too late. The
precautionary principle has apparently triumphed in America, for example, and
none of us noticed. We never really
objected when the diving boards disappeared and the peanuts in school lunches
were banned. Now we don’t even laugh out
loud when someone in power refers to the “infinite value of a single human life,”
as a matter of public policy. The unnoticed
politicization of science that allows a lifelong bureaucrat like Fauci to rule
the country is another culprit, though the fingerprints were there in the legions
of “climate scientists” who all stopped doing science and started proposing
laws and treaties. Then there are the traditional
American ideals of freedom and individual responsibility that the Left have
always hated---what better way to undermine them than to show how easily an “emergency”
permits them to be suspended, and perhaps, destroyed.
And now
that the nation has been brought to its knees after two months of executive
rule, there are other reasons. Defeating
Trump in November is the biggest one, which is why Democratic governors are the
most determined to maintain and extend the restrictions, and inflict the most
economic pain possible, for which Trump will be blamed. Unlike the Russia scam and impeachment and
the Ukrainian phone call, Trump never saw this one coming. Six months ago, it was obvious to everyone that
the only way Trump could be defeated would be if his booming economy
collapsed. It is odd, and ironic, and
sad, that when the Left came up with a plan to destroy it, and his presidency,
Trump did not merely step aside, he embraced the idea.
Copyright2020MichaelKubacki
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