One of the things I've noticed over the past year is a stubborn reliance on the part of many to complain about their "rights" being violated.
As our country is passing the quarter-million new cases a day mark. I ponder the meaning of the use of the word "rights" as it's applied in this instance.
I'm fully cognicent of what rights are. There are many definitions of course, but for the purpose of this missive, I'll briefly discuss rights in the context of what they are in THIS country.
Let me say at the outset that many deniers of this virus have one thing in common: they're dead. From the very virus they deny.
We have enumerated rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights. That does not mean that these rights are not subject to abuse. Freedom of the press, for example, does not include efforts at supporting coup attempts, lies, exaggerations or attacks in an effort to act as the public relations arm of any political campaign.
"...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," never meant the terrorism of antifa or BLM. It does not include riots, insurrection, assault, murder, rape, robbery, looting or burning to name a few, or as that right is generally practiced in leftist bastions like the Portland or Seattle.
Those, of course, are among the rights we have that are restricting government power.
But nowhere in that document does it say that we have the right to ignore government efforts to fight a pandemic. And no court has yet ruled with a survivable decision that we can continue on as if this pandemic simply does not exist and that we have the RIGHT to ignore it even if it doesn't.
Well, it does. My brother died from it shortly after Thanksgiving. I was not allowed to be there for that.
And I get it.
I also get the hypocrisy of government officials who make edicts governing behavior which they then blithely ignore; such as those who tell us to stay home, tell us not to eat out in restaurants, tell us not to travel, and tell us to hunker down... while they simply ignore their own rules. The Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The governors of California, Louisiana and New York. The mayors of LA, Denver, Austin, San Francisco, San Jose; the entire California Assembly. Council members for LA and Multnomah counties.
Each and every politician, regardless of party or position, who violates the law or these edicts should be forced to resign immediately, or face impeachment.
But none of them do. Because THEIR hypocrisy is perfectly OK.
And these are just those who've been caught. What about those who haven't been?
The problem is that politicians send a message when they do this. They set the example.
When politicians exempt rioters/protestors from the controls they would ram down everyone else's throat, claiming some nonexistent right to riot; when they fail to enforce the law on this suspect class, fail to treat them the same as they treat a business owner, THAT sends a message as well.
You CANNOT claim that eating in a restaurant is bad, but rioting/protesting is perfectly OK. You CANNOT claim, as Inslee stupidly did at the beginning of the response, that PUBLIC construction is fine, but PRIVATE construction is verboten. The same rules have to be enforced for everyone. When you make a conscious decision to treat different groups of people differently because one is a known political ally and the other isn't?
That's a problem that weakens your position geometrically.
And when others, the "common folk" follow those examples that the hypocrites set in ignoring their own laws/orders... then what?
When it comes to following the rules here in Washington, there have been multiple court challenges to Inslee's edicts, and all of them have failed, as I knew they would. Just over a year ago, the people of this state GRANTED Inslee the ability to do what he's doing at the ballot box... by an almost 2:1 margin. (For the record, I voted "no.")
We also passed another abortive, killed-by-a-moron-AG-and-Puget-Sound-Supreme-Court-initiative that would have reduced car tab fees to $30.
Many demanded that Inslee obey the vote on the car tabs, only to turn around and DISobey the vote on emergency powers. Odd that so many seem to think they can have it both ways.
That said, I admit that I support many of the restrictive measures in place. And the reason I support those measures is simple: the ONLY alternative those who deny the pandemic have yet to offer is to ignore it altogether, as if it's not even there.
Until recently, may of them foamed at the mouth over Sweden, who seemed to be using that particular denier mecca as THE example of how it should be handled. Sweden, for its part, had pretty much done precisely that: ignored it. For months. Until recently. Now?
Not so much.
Never mind that Sweden's' death rate was 2.5 times that of, say, Washington state. (As of now, Sweden, with it's population of 10.1 million. has 8,000 dead of COVID. Washington state, with our population of around 7.6 million, claims 3,104. Sweden has had the highest per capita death rate in all of Europe. And now that reality has set in, so have their restrictions and the fact that the denier plan, of simply ignoring it to achieve "herd immunity" is a failure.)
The US Supreme Court has ruled over the last century plus that government restrictions as a result of pandemics are, in fact, Constitutional.
It’s not, of course. The US Supreme Court addressed this issue 115 years ago. (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)):
“The Constitution,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for a 7-2 majority, “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic.” Its members “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”
Deniers, for the most part, can and have claimed that restrictions on business to fight COVID are NOT "reasonable regulations." But none have yet to prove their case.
The Supreme Court HAS ruled against efforts to restrict church attendance, for example. But the reason for that is clear: not that church attendance can't be restricted, but that it cannot be discriminatory in nature... as in you cannot restrict church attendance any more or less than you restrict any other form of attendance to anything or place else. To which, I obviously agree.
Many others have been telling us on this issue that it's to cover some insidious government effort to control us. Who hasn't seen the sheep memes, or worse yet, the despicable memes comparing this to Nazi concentration camps.
That the virus would magically disappear once the election was over.
Well, the election date has come and gone. They may argue that the election isn't "over" in that the Trump campaign is attempting to dismantle the fraudulent scam of Racist Joe's election, but that isn't what they meant.
Most who made that absolutely unsupportable claim then have forgotten all about it now, because I haven't heard much from them in that regard.
I have personally been attacked by many (The typically usual anti-vaxer types to be sure) but also others who should certainly know better after my 32 years of conservative politics here locally that I'm now a leftist. That I'm one of the sheep. That I'm ignorant. That I don't understand.
What THEY don't understand is I'm not going to base any medical decision on politics. I'm not going to take a position merely because a leftist puts it out there. Nor will I reject a position merely because a leftist puts it out there.
We have been cursed with thousands of mixed messages from dozens of agencies who, one day told us it was no big deal, then the next day demand that we go to the mattresses.
We get messages from elected representatives who tell us one thing one day and something else the next.
We were BOMBARDED by garbage like this shit from Inslee: Inslee says any COVID-19 vaccine will get added scrutiny before use in Washington. That doesn't seem to have happened. So, it was just more of Inlee's hate-Trump shtick and, well, just another lie.
The problem? It furthered the doubt about the COVID vaccine and increased the number of people who'll refuse to take it. And the increase in that number? That's all on Inslee.
Yes, I say be cautious about the vaccine. Yes, we should be careful about side effects, but what vaccine does NOT have side effects?
Meanwhile, many tell me that I don't have a clue. Here's the clue I do have: I wish my brother had the vaccine early last month.
He might still be alive.
As I review the video of my brother's funeral, I think to myself.... yeah, I've got a tiny idea about it, at least.
So, what to do.
I have been saying for quite some time that Taiwan seems to have figured it out. Taiwan is a country of about 24,000,000. A total of 7 have died from COVID. they have had less than 800 cases total.
It would seem to me that we would be much farther ahead if we would follow the plan that those who've met with success have followed.
And yet, Taiwan doesn't have riots or demonstrations over COVID restrictions. And they DO have those restrictions. Man who broke quarantine in Taiwan for 8 seconds fined $3,500
Is it possible that the people of Taiwan know more about "rights" then the people of THIS country? Is it possible they understand that sacrifice is required to get past this?
And what about the next pandemic? Do we decide to ignore that as well? Can those who lead us get past their hatred of each other and stop calling those who make the decision "racists" or worse when they make the call?
Will we EVER see a government that puts country before power and REALLY puts people ahead of politics?
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