With yet another burgeoning Covid “crisis” on the horizon it’s a good idea to step back and recap the events that got us here and look at today’s tangle of issues in the context of where we’re going.
Let’s do that today.
The immediate crisis du jour according to the salivating Rule Makers is of course the “surge” of Delta Variant (whose initials are ‘D.V.’, the same as Darth Vader; coincidence? I think not…) and the truckload of new rules they’re warning us must be followed to the letter for the survival of our species.
The problem of course is that Americans went down this road last year, and after 12 months of contradictions and faulty estimates and needless economic disaster, we have less faith in the rule makers this time around than we did then. The game of make the rules, then change the rules, then change the rules again when the first rules are found to be bogus, has gotten tedious enough for many Americans that we’re actually beginning to look past the assertions of the ‘experts’ and find the actual facts for ourselves.
Among that criticism it’s important to give some credit where it’s due at this point, and it goes to the Kansas Legislature. Senators and Representatives in Kansas went to bat for you last year in a big, big way, even though you may not have realized it. They took special and specific steps to check and balance and eventually curtail the devastating business and societal stoppage inflicted on the state by Governor “Lockdown” Laura Kelly, from forced church and business closings to a suffocating mask mandate, and helped Kansas reopen faster and start its recovery. Though problems remain primarily with windfall unemployment payments depressing the state’s workforce, again maintained by Kelly as a follower of Joe Biden’s Shovels of Borrowed Money theory, Kansas itself is surging compared to some states. We have the Kansas Legislature to thank for it.
Meanwhile outside Kansas, contradictions abound with the ever-changing so-called ‘official’ guidance on Covid vaccine, mask wearing and what we’re told may be the need for yet more shutdowns of public life.
The shameful unvaccinated portion of the population, which Joe Biden and CNN assert are all redneck Red State Republicans (but which in reality includes about half of the mostly Democrat voting Black Community as well) all share a similarity – they don’t trust the government.
Wonder why? Maybe because at the onset of Covid the oracle himself Anthony Fauci told us, correctly, the cloth masks we were strapping across our faces don’t do much to protect either the wearer or those around him from airborne Covid virus. But when the Trump-hating Left saw conservatives embracing anti-mask freedom and realized its value for virtue signaling beat downs, Fauci had to flip-flop on masks to ensure he was still popular in the “in” crowd and could keep his job into the next presidential administration. Going without a mask was cause for guilt and shame and signaled how uncaring we were, we were admonished – unless we were joining gangs of unmasked thugs in urban areas carrying George Floyd banners and burning down buildings or making a clandestine run to our California hairdresser.
The vaccine follies have been just as bad. First Kamala Harris says she wouldn’t take the vaccine if Trump told her to, in an effort to discredit his massively successful management of development and distribution of the shot – no doubt a real confidence builder among Biden/Harris voters. When released, the vaccine proved to be amazingly effective and along with developing treatments, drastically reduced the already minute overall kill rate of the virus.
But now the vaccinated, who are also nearly fully protected from the Darth Variant, are facing mask mandates and possible lockdowns so that the gallant rule makers can protect people who clearly have no intention of getting the vaccine anyway.
Huh?
If one facet of this pandemic has been made clear by the level of illogic and inconsistency it’s produced, it is this: science and fact don’t matter nearly as much as the rules and who gets to make them.
– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kansas.