We’ve just passed the 20th anniversary of September 11, and there are many lessons to draw from the government’s response to that tragic day, but the most important in the current moment is that “temporary” government measures for dealing with a crisis have a way of becoming permanent features of our lives.
Many remember the time before we had to take off our shoes and pour out our babies’ bottles before boarding airplanes.
Twenty years later, we begrudgingly accept the measures meant to keep us “safe” when flying the friendly skies.
Everyone generally knows it’s bullshit, but no one does anything about it. We dutifully remove our belts and let the agents molest us, and watch helplessly as they confiscate the trusted Swiss Army knife we forgot we had in our purse.
This, despite the fact that the indignities we suffer at the hands of TSA agents are mostly theater and have failure rates of around 95 percent.
There is no public outcry, because we’ve gotten used to it.
COVID has put us into 9/11-style crisis mode, only this time, the crisis is of much longer duration and the bureaucratic reactions are constantly held over our heads like the Sword of Damocles.
We are now in the second full year of this indecision and psychological warfare, and the policies are even more ineffective and invasive than those post-9/11.
Here in New Mexico, we are among the worst of the worst.
For instance, the Notorious MLG has extended the mask order once again.
But if masks work, why haven’t they worked?
Masks haven’t prevented nearly 5,000 alleged COVID deaths or the 265,00-ish positive cases reported.
Similarly, our state claims 72% of New Mexicans are fully vaxxed, and the Old Ruin Joe Biden is getting private businesses to do his dirty work by mandating vaccines for employees all across the country.
But if vaccines work, why haven’t they worked?
The pandemic is now worse than before the vaccine was available, with more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths than at this point last year.
The bureaucrat class likes nothing better than justifying their existence by “solving” problems. Much like the policies instantiated post-9/11, the powers-that-be keep doubling down on the ineffective safety theater of wearing masks, standing six-ish feet apart indoors, and the highly questionable but lucrative vaccines.
So far, the only guarantees of these policies have been the profits of drug companies, and the increased powers of the bureaucrats as they seek to control our daily lives.
The most nefarious of these measures are vaccine mandates and passports, which, besides creating a large population of vaccinated but still contagious people, mean that we’ll have to kiss our personal autonomy and civil liberties goodbye for the most mundane of human activities.
It’s a guaranteed TSA experience at every store and coffee shop.
It’s the Human Resources department at work knowing your personal medical records, even if you work from home.
Worst of all, it will further desensitize the public to the construction of a system of massive social control and coercion like that of the Chinese Communist Party.
If you think they will stop with this mandate, you haven’t been paying attention.
There will no longer be limiting principles on anything that can be forced into your body, or any indignities you will be made to suffer.
This is not hyperbole.
The slippery slope is a downhill sprint. And it’s how COVID policy works.
“15 days to flatten the curve” became “inject this into your body, or you can’t feed your family” in less than 18 months.
The question is, will we comply, and get used to it, the way we got did with 9/11 policies?
Or will we fight this like our freedom and the freedom of our children depends on it?
I know which side I’m on.