Mark Stewart Greenstein opine to NY Times Columnist Frank Bruni re Government repression. Safety is tertiary to the authoritarians. Oppression is a bigger scare to conservatives than a higher mortality rate. With government oppression more of us might live a bit longer, but none of us live WELL.
There might actually be a HIGHER level of compliance. Take, for example, me.
I got the first chot 3 weeks ago. I did so not because of disease transmission, not because of local authorities, and not because of even private businesses that are choosing their our course.
I got the shot because a nice older person around me is nervous.
That's sufficient. Whether she has a truly compromised condition, or is erring on the extreme side, or is just following pedagogues, know-nothings, and know-littles-with authority, I'm not arguing with her. My dosing is for her, a worthwhile inconvenience. www.stewartforliberty.com
Conservatives act out of niceness. Progressives too often act out of obedience.
Isn't the organic, nice result better than the compelled one?
And, back to pizza....
Aren't you abetting authoritarians who make rules based primarily on what they can get away with?
We can't all wear bubble-suits, so we mandate masks, a 3/4 good step. We can't demand that everybody vaccinate, so the Biden handlers go with "those in 100+ person corporations". Your restaurant can't go 100% vax (or can't check for actual proof of vaccination) so it does the HALF-safe thing of letting some of its patrons dine inside while letting others dine outside and die.
If they, or you, REALLY thought virus transmissions is still a threat to non-compromised Americans, almost all of whom have built up immunities to Covid 19, we wouldn't be dining at all outside our homes. Indeed, we'd build bubble home annexes and have 24-7 servants until we reached 100% immunity. (For the amount our governments' covid-prevention regigimes have cost us, we could have built a 4-room bubble home with 24-7 service to every scared 80+ year old).
This is a charade that abets high and mighty authority. Those with authority test how obedient can people be, to restrict their businesses, their church attendance, their schooling, and their bodily choices. With every successful compulsion, they gain more power, and divine more license to even more harshly restrict freedom.
If this really were a life-and-death issue, we would disallow bus rides. Plane rides, Uber rides.
At some point even the elite don't tolerate the resrictions they want to create. So they stop SOMEWHAT short; not in the name of safety, but in the name of the politically possible.
That possible is expanding. You may like it now because (why actually?, a few more 90 year olds will be able to shop and dine) but you can't possibly like the future of complete obedience to authority.. Colonists revolted 244 years ago for FAAAAAR fewer predations by an absolute monarch George III , that we have upon us now. This is not a recent complaint; it dates back 20 years, from the semi-fearful-yet power-grabbing reasonable restrictions by George W Bush, to those of Obama, Trump, all 50 state governors, and now Biden, or his puppeteers. We are moving, very quickly, towards authoritarianism.
We know its a charade because when a Younger person tests positive, we are not worried about his health. When Gleyber Torresi leaves the Yankees' lineup following a positive Covid test, nobody is fretful that he will survive; we are fretful that the Yankees might not make the playoffs.
We conservatives are not stupid. We know the covid tranmission rates as well as you.
We instead have a different calculus. We have a heathy respect for individlual and private group decisions. The Leftist revile individualism, so they revile conservative values, and they have come at times to hate us, we very nice people who are not imperiling any innocent victims.
(remember, if vaccinies work, we who have been vaccinated are not imperiled.
If they don't work completely, you can't condemn someone who wants to stay out of the frenzy. My body my choice, is now a salient slogan).