A Plague?
Regardless of what you may think about the origins of COVID-19, bio-weapon, ‘just the flu’ or the new plague, it’s here. The response is real, the global economy has been damaged. The speed with which those seeking power is astounding. It has become a race to tyranny, openly embracing a Fascistic control. Any alternative, the media has informed us, would be a heartless do-nothing response.
Trump, to his credit, didn’t order a national top-down approach to COVID-19 he left it up to the states to handle. Nor has he yet nationalized every manufacturing plant to make N-95 masks and PPE. Some states are being put on lockdown to stem the spread of a disease whose biggest threat is overwhelming an ill-prepared medical infrastructure.
Congress is paralyzed by partisan bickering seeing this as a publicity opportunity. The Republicans are wrapping themselves in the moral high ground of sending out UBI checks and the Democrats decry lack of Congressional control over corporate handouts while $1.8 trillion in new spending will be coming from the Federal government. Not one bit of this spending is prudent nor necessary. It’s just more of our socialist destruction of wealth through debt issuance.
Media and leaders have turned the fear level to full blast. This biblical plague, COVID-19, appears to be a tough virus to beat but isn’t world ending. Hospitals and the medical community will be overworked and will probably need help but we cannot help when ordered to stay at home. Many of us would donate time, money and energy to help our community get through this. For the sake of the economy, others would even be brave enough to show up for their work.
Authority Flu?
However, we continue to allow power-hungry maniacs to run roughshod over us because we’re fearful of this plague. They have succeeded in selling fear in hopes to save themselves. They keep telling us that open markets don’t work and that individuals cannot be trusted and that only the State can coordinate such a monumental task such as saving humanity from nature. They’re wrong.
The reality is that the State is grabbing an insane level of power. Martial Law in the U.S. appears to be right around the corner. While we have yet to realize that the more power governments grab the less capable they are of protecting us, our family and our communities. The non-compliant are viewed as a threat and hiding is considered heroic.
With every crisis comes opportunity. Opportunities in change, new beginnings and ending bad habits. If we are entering into a survival situation, let’s eliminate the issues we’ve been fighting over for the past years, like identity politics. Fights over gender, race, sex and color look have always been dangerous and stupid. Does it really matter if the guy behind the meat counter at your local supermarket is a MAGA guy or a Bernie Bro, hates gay people or is a closet tranny?
Let us be brave enough to let commerce flow again. The healthy, low-risk people should be allowed to take necessary risks to keep the lights on, the sewers functioning and the food supply from collapsing. Instead, they are forced to cower in a government-enforced lock-down. “Release us,” should be our demand.
Some people will make the wrong choice, but most won’t. Stop using the people as your straw men to grind your political ax. Zero tolerance is a dangerous solution and will maximize costs at marginal benefits. Our communities must become alive again to fight back against the threats of the government’s overreach or the virus itself.
To deny people, capable of making millions of decisions in the course of a day, the freedom to decide their own level of safety is criminal. Competent leaders need the decency and humility to get out of our way so we can thrive.
Top-down authority is separating us from our greatest strength, our ability to try new things and solve problems. More governmental directives are not what we need. They don’t have all the answers but are pretending too. The way to restore confidence in people is to not inspire panic. The one-size-fits-all mandates are incapable of solving problems and will only prolong the misery.
What is lacking is humble leadership to provide more encouragement and to dictate less. Leaders need to have faith in their citizens to accept that bad people may do good things and good people may do bad things. They need to be flexible enough to know that decisions made today may need to be reversed tomorrow.
Cure
We’ve been given a huge wake-up call, our leaders have built us a house of cards. Executive power, corporatism, and socialism have been exposed. The major flaw with central planning is the lack of specific knowledge. Problems are usually an aggregate of complex things spread over many different and diverse systems. The idea that ‘wise and verified smart” people can centrally plan for all individuals is absolutely ridiculous.
The decisions we allow our governments to take now will determine what that world will look like tomorrow. Panic and coercion will not restore confidence in a currency, a people and a government. The cure for the authority that plagues us is; freedom, good leadership, and trust.
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