If you're a storekeeper, attempting to do business in a Democrat-ruled city with reimagined police, and beset by a mob bent on collecting reparations, you might think differently.
The canard, though, has purchase. For instance, "There is no reason someone needs a 450 hp pickup truck. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that."
If you're farming the sandhills of Nebraska or ranching almost anywhere or have horses for show or racing, you might think differently.
Yes, I got out of Illinois for a little while. Elkhart, Indiana, is the home base for recreational vehicles, and the non-powered versions (in civilian speak, there are motor homes, with power, and travel trailers, without) have to get from Elkhart to the camping equipment dealer. Your chances of becoming an independent contractor are better if your truck has fifth-wheel capability, and the best machine is the one-ton capability with dual rear wheels. Knowledge of the industry probably induces even more anxiety among a certain kind of Aesthetically Sensitive Metrofexual.
I've also heard the canard applied to large sport-utes with three rows of seats and a cargo compartment. That might be a popular pose among urban hipsters with small families, whose spawn don't play soccer, or who aren't into bringing half the neighborhood around on outings. That it's now apparently possible to put the eight wealthiest billionaires into an Expedition (or the largest Navigator or a Hummer) with room for the golf clubs is likely to give the Sensitive more reason to invoke it.
The argument is wrong, no matter who makes it. "I come across the 'stuff nobody needs' argument frequently, from voices all across the political spectrum, for reasons ranging from economic to environmental to spiritual." Including, apparently, electric guitars.
But let's think about the consequences of that canard over the past year.
There's no reason someone needs to go to the gym. (And some people might be using the quarantines as an excuse not to go back.)
There's no reason someone needs to hang out at a bar.
There's no reason someone needs to go to the movies.
That was all, supposedly, "for our own good," and it was all wrong. "Narrative has overtaken reality with the left and they won’t let it go."
Why should this emergency be any different from any other emergency? The left has always been about dramatics rather than about engaging reality. Craig "Streetwise Professor" Pirrong correctly calls them out.
Appeals to health are particularly seductive in this era of safetyism, when ironically most of the true health scourges of humanity have been eliminated, or at least greatly reduced, and marginal risks have been transmogrified into horrific threats. Moreover, by appending the term “public” to the emotive word “health”, the ruling class denies individual responsibility or insinuates the abject irresponsibility of individuals, and asserts the necessity of controlling you. For your own good, you know, and that of “the public.” You are a selfish bastard if you resist, right?Particularly given the less-than-spectacular record of Wise Experts.
The public health profession has always attracted statist control freaks. There are indeed limited circumstances in which external health effects of individual decisions are so damaging that some constraints on individual choice are justified, and it would be acceptable if public heath authorities stayed within that small box. But the profession has striven mightily to expand its authority to wider and wider spheres of personal behavior. And particularly in the midst (would that it be in the aftermath) of covidmania the totalitarians among us, who presume to rule us, have found public health claims to be a powerful weapon in their relentless campaign to destroy freedom and rights.
Which is why unless proven otherwise, subject to a very high burden of proof, we should view any assertion that something is a public health issue as a mask for fascist assaults on our liberties.
No comments:
Post a Comment