Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
– George Washington
Even though I am well aware of American’s obsessive, single-minded and moronic devotion to black hat/white hat (excuse me, “blue hat/red hat”) fantasies of how the world works, it is especially frustrating and infuriating during the pandemic. On the one hand, we have a demented would-be emperor and his crazed followers denying that anything is wrong and claiming that the best way to deal with the possibility of a disease raging through the population is to pretend it doesn’t exist. On the other hand, we have several dozen deranged would-be kings and queens granting themselves the power to reduce people to serfdom and destroy everything they have worked toward for years or decades by declaring their jobs, businesses and even Constitutional rights “non-essential” and sending out violent thugs to enforce their “orders”, however arbitrary or nonsensical. And despite their claims to the contrary, none of these positions are based in science, logic or careful consideration; they are purely based in politics. The collectivist idiots who identify with the color “blue” (in defiance of its historical associations) like to pretend that their arbitary diktats are based in “science”, despite the fact that there’s nothing “scientific” about criminalizing the purchase of seeds while allowing the purchase of produce, or violently confining a woman in a filthy cage packed with strangers for the “crime” of being found in the company of her romantic partner. Meanwhile, collectivist idiots who identify with the color “red” (in defiance of its historical associations) like to pretend that their arbitary diktats are based in…something that isn’t arbitrary? (I’m not sure; I’ve never been good at understanding stupid people). Examples include banning abortion as “non-essential” (same reason some states gave for trying to ban gun sales; it’s a versatile excuse for authoritarianism), suspending the writ of habeas corpus, or closing the borders. In reality, both groups of violent, power-mad imbeciles are defining their positions completely in relation to one another (as they usually do), and searching for logic or consistency in any proclamation made by any US politician is a complete waste of time. My advice? You’ve got a brain; use it. Read as much as you can, decide for yourself which precautions make sense, respect the rights of others to make those decisions for themselves, and accept whatever consequences result from your choices without pointing the finger at anyone else other than the politicians and other state actors who are never content with only running their own lives, but instead demand to make decisions for everyone, and dispatch thugs and lawyers to destroy the lives of anyone who refuses to kowtow to their whims.
