Thursday, February 27, 2020

What the Coronavirus Tells Us About Trump and the Left

What does it take to contain a deadly contagious disease?  Closing the borders and curtailing international flights into the country would seem like an obvious step, which some countries are taking.  But how would safety measures affect the daily lives of those who are already within the country?  In China, the virus has provided the communist government with an excuse to crack down further on churches.  Italy has also forbidden public worship, while leaving markets and sports venues open.  Japan is closing schools.  In a pandemic, or a perceived pandemic, the government might, among other things, forbid all public gatherings, including church services; impose curfews; suspend commerce; curtail the movements of citizens; and generally prevent people from going about their daily business.  These prohibitions and restrictions would of, course, all be backed by the use of the state’s coercive police powers.

The potential for the government to turn tyrannical, under the guise of safeguarding public health and safety, is obvious.  Chaos causes people to start looking around for a savior.  The more we feel threatened by mortal dangers, the more ready we are to support draconian remedies.  A panicky populace is low-hanging fruit for power grabbers.  It follows, then, that before we start surrendering our liberties to the government in the name of dealing with a national health emergency, we should make sure that we are in fact in an emergency.  We need to be skeptical of anyone who tries to whip us up into a frenzy.

Who has been trying to foment panic about the coronavirus?  People are terrified based on what they see in the news.  President Trump has been saying we have it under control, and the Democrats are decrying what they characterize as his non-action.  They are wailing that he is not allocating enough money to the problem.  At his press conference last night, reporters tried to accuse him of hypocrisy for handling the coronavirus in a manner that they implied was consistent with Obama’s handling of ebola, which Trump criticized.  The city of San Francisco has gone as far as to declare a state of emergency, before even a single documented case of the virus was detected there. The media are breathlessly declaring their hope that the coronavirus is Trump’s Benghazi, thus proving that their emphasis is not on alleviating human misery, but capitalizing on it.

Notice that Trump, whom the liberals have declared a threat to democracy and a tyrant in the making, has done none of those things.  He acknowledges that there is a potential threat, but he is encouraging the country to be calm about it, and to take common-sense precautions.  He has formed a team to cope with the disease, and he has stated that he does not believe it is inevitable that it will become a pandemic in this country, where the number of documented cases is in the double digits.  And he’s absolutely right.  It does not need to become a pandemic, if we take the appropriate small steps before larger ones become necessary.

If Trump were the power-mad totalitarian the left accuses him of being, he should be using this coronavirus scare as an opportunity to take over the daily lives of American citizens.  He’s not doing that.  The left, on the other hand, is using the scare as an opportunity to try to whip the American people into enough of a frenzy to demand the takeover of their lives.

I think this tells us everything we need to know.

4 comments:

  1. You last paragraph and concluding sentence says it all perfectly. This has gotten just plain nutty. At my age I've managed to make it through a gazillion possible pandemics. The only scourge that came close to home was polio. Two of my best childhood (boy) friends contracted polio. Both survived with one of the twins only having a slight weakness in one leg. He passed away a few years ago at almost 80. I miss him.

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  2. Adrienne, I think the time will come when the left will abolish elections, or at least try to abolish them. I figured Obama (or his handlers) would try it. They have already come out and said you can’t trust elections, so that’s why they had to try and impeach Trump. I actually think that’s part of their long game. That’s why they have worked so hard to subvert bedrock institutions: to create chaos, so we will seek a savior. For the same reason, they try to create panic with viruses. Panic makes you do stupid things.

    For many years, I have told my clients: “I promise you faithfully, I will let you know when it’s time to panic.” Amazingly, that time never comes.

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  3. **sigh** Just another way to manipulate the sheeple. Good for Trump.

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  4. Shirley, we certainly have to take anything the media says with about half a ton of salt.

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