Our freedom is not yet restored. "Remember when we were initially told the medical community needed two weeks to flatten the curve and get a handle on overcrowded hospitals? Then that turned into indefinite lockdowns and mandates. Before we knew it, we were living in an authoritarian country, not living as free Americans." An authoritarian country with a new sort of monopoly capitalist, to boot. "[O]ne of the character tokens [Parker Brothers] made sure to retain was the top hat, representing the top-hatted banker – a recognisable cipher for greed and indifference in Depression-era America. Perhaps the ‘crypto slob’ – a mop-headed millennial burnishing his climate-change credentials – ought to be this century’s equivalent." It could all have been avoided. "From the very beginning of the pandemic, in fact, there were legions of pedigreed epidemiologists and other scientists—many of whom later signed the Great Barrington Declaration—who correctly held that viruses cannot be extinguished via draconian quarantines and other clumsy one-size-fits-all public health interventions; and that when it came to coronaviruses in particular, it was doubtful whether even vaccines—which had never been successful with coronaviruses—could defeat the latter’s natural propensity to mutate and spread."
The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.
3. No final say. "What counts as misinformation can change over time with new evidence and scientific consensus."
7. Pronoun protocols. "Objectively, it's all meaningless."
12. Indeed. "When authorities lose the power to convince, they coerce. That is what is going on now as they tell us to shut up and submit."
13. Our Progressive Overlords can't stop pushing. "Every popular movement has a flashpoint moment when the average person realizes what a load of crap their government is trying to shove down their throats."
14. Fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency. "Dictatorships may look dynamic because they can do things fast. The problem is they often do stupid things fast."
15. Herbert Croly cannot save you from those stupid things. "The regulators, administrators, and policymakers in the alphabet soup of federal agencies set the rules and impose their collective will as they see fit. Regardless of who the people repeatedly elect to reform the system, those politicians and their agendas come and go; the permanent government persists."
16. Reality checks in. "Shockingly enough, most normal Americans are starting to suspect our elite overlords are full of shit, and the elite overlords are freaking out."
17. Gridlock is the least bad outcome. "That's good news for Americans baffled by Democrats' insistence on treating the U.S. economy as something between a laboratory experiment and a toy train set, with lawmakers indulging their whims through serial rounds of life-altering policy moves."
18. Are better choices possible? "With Trump, voters got real achievement with coarseness, with Biden utter failure with near senility."
19. When you deny coherent beliefs. "With civility torn asunder, local autonomy usurped, traditions upended and genders deconstructed, we should not be surprised that we are divided and drifting as well, like flotsam and jetsam in the ocean."
20. Put not your faith in expertise. "The more the people asked government to do, the greater their hopes became, and the more disappointed they felt when it failed."
21. Is the children learning? "I have a master’s degree and 20 years of experience, but I’m a glorified custodian."
22. Buckwheat: "A perfect example of someone who has a prestigious job simply because she checks off several identity boxes in a Democrat administration."
23. The false efficiency of Precision Scheduled Railroading. "It’s not money. It’s the quality of life."
24. Market tests come for that false efficiency. "Competition causes employers to think harder about what workers want and to offer it as seamlessly as possible."
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