The Pandemic and The Levers of Power
It is getting flat out naked.
The bluer the state, the greater the virus related restrictions. This, at least in part, reflects the ideological differences between left and right, blue and red, but it sure is funny how those restrictions have waxed and waned as much in parallel to political considerations as to virus stats. But I’ll admit, that is partisan conjecture – assigning a motive without direct evidence. There are strong indications that many governors are manipulating the restrictions to keep the economy in a state such that the subsequent dissatisfaction will result in a throwing out of the incumbents – particularly the Republican ones. But again, indications are not evidence, so let’s not get carried too far away with this.
But, if you take a step back, some evidence begins to appear. Consider this tweet from the host early this morning:
Well, isn’t that interesting? The governors create the economic havoc, but it is up to the feds to relieve it and the feds cannot seem to get it together. Still not evidence you say? True – actual proof would require that I demonstrate collusion between the governors and Congressional Democrats. It’s not collusion per se, but Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi are related by marriage, of course not to each other. Suddenly “indications” have become probabilities.
Want more? Consider what teachers unions are doing:
The Demand Safe Schools Coalition held a “Day of Resistance” on Monday this week, meant to “advance a racial justice agenda in public education, in particular by organizing for police-free schools.”…Among the numerous demands the group lists on its website are “police-free schools,” a “moratorium on new charter or voucher programs and standardized testing,” reduced class sizes, the “canceling [of] rents and mortgages,” a “moratorium on evictions/foreclosures,” and “direct cash assistance to those not able to work or who are unemployed.”The group is also calling for a “massive infusion of federal money to support the reopening funded by taxing billionaires and Wall Street.”
It is implied, if not stated outright, that these demands are conditions for teachers returning to work from the virus-related shuttering. In other words, they are attempting to make the virus shuttering into a strike and their back-to-work demands are political – not at all related to compensation. Unions, and especially pubic-service unions like the teachers unions, are the core constituency of the Democratic Party. These unions are playing naked, raw politics with the virus. These demands have nothing to do with the health and safety of students or teachers. These demands have everything to do with the radical leftist agenda that has taken over the Democrats.
OK, I am still lining up coincidental things and not proving, outright, that this is a coordinated political strategy. Fair enough, but this is politics, not criminal court. I think this constitutes the preponderance of the evidence which is good enough for civil court. But even then in politics all one needs is the implication. This is certainly more than the implication. If they are not coordinating, they are all listening to the same “dog whistle” – probably Rahm Emanuel’s pontification of what to do with a crisis. That’s enough for me to take off the kid gloves.
This is simply despicable, heinous, horrific, a bit inhuman and utterly contemptable. Were there no political considerations in pandemic policy and what is best for the health and safety of the nation and its many regions was the only consideration, the economic devastation would be vast. But what the Democrats have done to the economy here is, metaphorically, turn the fire-bombing of Dresden into a full scale nuclear attack.
My business serves businesses. Further, because my business requires travel, I have continued to do so, on a limited and controlled basis, throughout. These things, I think, make me uniquely sensitive to the economic hardship that has been wrought by the pandemic and related policy. Entire industries are effectively ended. The amount of capital necessary to restart them is astronomical. This is most dramatic in the tourism industry which often accounts for the economy of entire regions. These regions are simply dead. I’ve been to some of them; it is frightening to see. Ghost towns generally appear slowly as people leave over time, but we have created instantaneous ghost towns. Tens of thousands of people out of work in the blink of an eye. As a necessary precaution against disease, I understand this phenomena – but to promote it for political gain is pathologically self-interested.
That Southern California plays this game is simply mind numbing. The motion picture and television production industry remains an enormous economic engine here, but not any more. In the blink of an eye and with the stroke of a pen, tens and tens of thousands out-of-work. Most of them, by the way, are so-called “gig workers” who live in a cycled state of feast and famine. If the famine is too long they can never get back to the feast. I have one friend, for example, just two weeks away from achieving full retirement status with one of the guilds. Who knows if he will ever get that, and if he does not there is no V-shaped recovery for him, there is only a retirement that is not retired and scraping by for the rest of his life. This is the cost of the politics that are afoot here, not temporary inconvenience, but the permanent alteration of lives spent in pursuit of the American Dream. The death of a loved one is terribly tragic; however, it is the stuff of life, one mourns and one recovers from their mourning. But to have your last years of life transformed from ones of leisure and higher pursuit to ones of toil and concern, not by an act-of-God like the pandemic but by political maneuverings is unconscionable.
If we do not purge our body politic of this heinousness now, I wonder if we will have forever lost the ability to discern right from wrong. There is something deeply wrong in America right now, it’s not politics, it’s not economics, it’s in the very fiber of our beings. We have grown calloused and unconcerned about fellow citizens. We consider wearing a mask a sign of virtue while at the same time robbing an individual of their livelihood. Somewhere along the line we have lost our way morally, spiritually and communally.
It is time to reclaim it.
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