As related to COVID-19 issues, there is reality and there is politics.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi encouraged people to come to Chinatown and gather for events on February 24. Now she criticizes Trump for not doing more about the virus in January. Well, he did: He shut down air travel to the U.S. from China over her objections and those of other Democrats. This type of political theatrics from big-city, liberal-elite politicians who only think what affects them equally affects the rest of the country is why we have the Electoral College and two senators from every state.
Democrats said Trump should have acted more like Hitler in February to shut down the U.S. economy sooner over the coronavirus. Now, when he wants to reopen the U.S. economy, Dems say it is the states’ right to decide when to re-open and that Trump is acting like Hitler. The intellectual debate on the left seems to be: just how much Hitler is the correct amount?
Most concerning to me is witnessing just how rapidly — and without debate — so many American lemmings were willing to cede their freedoms and economic well-being to a bumbling government.
Almost all politicians, government workers and edu-crats (the governing class) get fully paid from taxpayers’ wallets while they sit at home. The poster boy, or in this case poster woman, for power-drunk abuse is Michigan’s governor, the fetching Gretchen Whitmer. One of the best signs made by protestors seeking to ease some of the draconian restrictions she imposed on Michiganders read “Heil Whitmer!” Cops in Michigan are probably pulling citizens over on suspicion of a fresh haircut.
It’s not hard. States with fewer COVID-19 cases should reopen sooner. If citizens there don’t like it, they can stay inside. That’s the great thing about freedom. You have choices and are responsible for their outcome.
Let me remind “paid to sit at home” politicians that all jobs are “essential” to those who have to live in the real world. Small businesses matter; they are the backbone of America. Look at the companies who have signs on the outfield fence at your kids’ baseball games. Those are the real heroes, not pontificating politicians who hog the airwaves.
So with the well-founded distrust of politicians and the one-sided media, we citizens need to err on the side of freedom and common sense. When Jacksonville, Florida reopened its beaches, the predictable narrative by the left was that those rubes in the Sunshine State are stupid. To dramatize their arrogant contempt, the media had to lie. They found a stock photo from last year of people crowded on an L.A. beach and said it was people on Jacksonville beaches. What does truth matter when you think you are always right?
The ever-changing advice and faulty “models” on this pandemic should be considered by all. Buried in these wildly inconsistent “models” is good news. Coronavirus is mutating and is causing fewer symptoms. In the movies, viruses mutate and become more deadly, but the reality is the opposite. The 1918 Spanish Flu became just the seasonal N1N1 Flu, and we know more now than when it ravaged the world. We also know that the Spanish Flu was to be feared and was much less fun than what followed, the Spanish fly.
Like most political views, your take on all of this is probably based on where you get your news. We know Fox News is watched by conservatives, MSNBC by liberals, and CNN by people stuck in airports and custodial staff who clean the CNN studio at night. I do know that life is risky and that Americans are smart. The mortality rate of this virus will be higher than the Crossing-the-Clintons body count and lower than the 2.2 million the academic models projected. When this is over, our freedoms need to be quickly regained and never again allowed to be trampled on by the political whims of third-rate politicians.
If you think pols are not getting their jollies by telling us what to do, look no further than their insistence on keeping us off beaches. No different than a Wal-Mart or a sidewalk, beaches are class warfare at its best. Then the brilliant televangelist-scientists announced this week that warmth and “natural light” kill the Coronavirus. Until this point, those elitists must have thought only Heineken Light did.
A libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron’s a frequent guest on TV and radio. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.