Sometimes a Not-Great Notion

By Clarice Feldman

 Remember the song “Goodnight Irene”? It goes:

“Sometimes I lives in the country
Sometimes I lives in the town
Sometimes I haves a great notion
To jump into the river an' drown .”

The not-so-great notion in recent years, in my view, has been that of the ruling elites of the western nations now heading for political suicide. They seized upon the unknown consequences of the new and fast-spreading Wuhan virus for political gain. They used it to exceed their constitutional powers -- locked down their citizens and demanded compliance with various vaccine mandates and treatment protocols and then clung on to those powers long after the deleterious effect of those mandates exceeded the virus’s harm. Never, to my knowledge, has any country before this quarantined the healthy along with the sick. Never. (And I remind you that while locking down the young, the robust, and the otherwise healthy New Yorkers, Governor Andrew Cuomo went so far as to quarantine the stricken with the healthy but most vulnerable elderly -- the result was thousands of deaths of oldsters otherwise far less likely to have become infected.)

Never to my knowledge has the public health establishment so ruined its own credibility. Doubt me? Look to our own country for a prime and early example: The CDC endorsing lockdowns while cheering on the BLM protests. It was, in short, a clear example of the political nature of the public health establishment’s pronouncements. It has seriously damaged them, and I hope they suffer the consequences with a sharply reduced budget and a clear restriction of their activities, if not an abolition of the agency altogether. That we funded -- under the table through a cut-out entity -- the Wuhan lab activity, even when expressly forbidden to do so and despite being fully apprised of that lab’s safety shortcomings, just adds to my disgust for their actions and continued broad scope of authority. Naturally, the public-health establishment spent a great deal of time and effort discrediting sound research (and researchers) who believed the evidence showed the virus was not created in nature, but in the lab and spread as a result of a lab leak. Incompetent, disingenuous, and clearly political -- that’s our generously funded runaway public-health establishment.

But there is more. Besides scaring the dickens out of people about the virus, the left used it to undo sensible election integrity procedures, benefit big box and online merchandisers to the determent of smaller businesses, and close schools and force masks on children to satisfy the teachers' unions who  were only too happy to get paid for not working. The strictures were not terribly onerous to the gentry class that now supports the Democrats, but it was ordinary working people who suffered. It was they who manned the nursing homes and hospitals, supplied stores and customers who were able to work at home online. The deleterious political, economic, and psychic consequences -- increased suicides and drug abuse in children, for one -- of these moves grew every day. Even as the virus ebbed and as we learned better how to treat it (despite every effort by the same people who funded the Wuhan lab and ordered protocols that increased fatalities and curtailed information about treatment strategies for curing it), the political leaders relished their newfound powers and refused to relent. They dug in their heels even when it became clear that the vaccines they were requiring us to take did not prevent infection or replication of the virus and were not completely safe or enduring. (Of course, every one of the worst COVID tyrants from Obama, Whitmer, Abrams, Pelosi, to Newsom exposed themselves as hypocrites, excusing themselves from the very rules they imposed on the rest of us -- a sort of modern-day version of sumptuary laws where only certain people can gather maskless or in large numbers.) I think their game is just about up. 

The news about the Canadian truckers strike is the story of the day: Ordinary people taking back the power to determine for themselves the risk and benefit calculations they wish to take.

It’s not just Canada. Similar protests are taking place in Paris, in the Netherlands, in New Zealand, and in Australia.

The state-corporate alliance to crush ordinary people may not have shot its whole quiver, but that point is getting close.

Ask yourself this: If the Canadians, for example, succeed somehow in driving the convoy out of Ottawa and off the bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Michigan, if the Dutch succeed in blocking the convoy at the Hague, and if the French succeed in blocking the convoy to Paris, what’s to stop all the trucks from simply staying off the road and not delivering supplies to the capital cities controlled by the COVID Masters?

The next scheduled convoy is headed to Washington, D.C. this month. Maybe it will prove unnecessary. Several Democrat-run states (including Delaware, Connecticut, and New Jersey) have already relented on some of their draconian mandates. And the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, looked at his calendar and noticed we were fast approaching the November mid-terms and called for an “off-ramp” for these unconstitutional and hated restrictions. Of course, he will justify this, as will his party honchos, on a claim that Omicron is less fatal, but the truth is these restrictions are unnecessary and unpopular. In Maloney’s own words, “People are sick to death of this pandemic.” It is amusing though not surprising that he contends that we can ease up now “because of the president’s leadership and the Democratic plan to beat the virus” but I doubt that will convince many of the genius and hard work of a basement-dwelling, incoherent president. In fact, as Maloney admits “better therapeutics” -- and not, by the way, were he honest, due to CDC work, but the work of front-line healthcare workers -- justifies viewing the virus as less fatal than we thought it might be two years ago. Indeed, my online physician friends have consistently contended that the public-health establishment made useful therapeutics forbidden and increased fatalities by their strictures and protocols. 

In short, the people who came up with the not great notion of enhancing their power and the power of their gentry and donor base by lockdowns and enforced compliance with mask and vaccine mandates are jumping in the river of our widespread discontent and drowning.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/sometimes_a_notgreat_notion.html