Liberal Lockdowns
By Brittany
Covid “safety protocols” have destroyed small businesses across the nation, increased poverty, and ruined livelihoods. In an act of either blatant political maneuvering or unbelievable stupidity, blue states have magically revoked their lockdown policies since Joe Biden entered the Oval Office a mere two weeks ago. Governor Newsom removed California’s stay at home order, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot curiously changed her tune on business closures, insisting the cost is now simply too great to bear. These changes in tone, matched with grossly different media coverage, a shell of the promised COVID plan from Biden, and a flurry of Executive Orders on issues not even related to COVID-19, have Americans suspicious and outraged.
What is so shocking about recent reopenings isn’t the timing; it is the condition under which they were removed. Whether the Democrats are switching positions now to save themselves from removal or to execute the final phase of a calculated political ploy related to the election outcome is irrelevant. Democratic politicians weaponized the coronavirus, decimating our savings and wellbeing in the process. Our lives are not toys for the political elite to play chess with. Politicians are elected by the people for the people. With recent reopenings in situations not so indifferent from when lockdown were put into place, Democratic governors shut down their economies in a holdout until Biden took office, in a move akin to Iran holding American hostages until the second President Reagan took the oath of office. Politicians are using Covid to exploit Americans for political gain.
Apart from Governor Cuomo of New York, Governor Newsom of California has been the media’s golden boy throughout much of the pandemic. The first governor to institute lockdowns, Newsom seems to have bitten off more than he can chew, and his relationship with the public has soured over recent months. This has something to do with the fact that Newsom has repeatedly defied his own orders, considering his kids go to school in-person, he’s been spotted maskless, and he violated his own indoor-dining ban at California’s most awarded restaurant. If there were ever a time of “do as I say not as I do” for American politicians, it would be now. COVID has allowed politicians the opportunity to use a pandemic as an excuse to tighten their grip on the population and assert total control. Liberals claim to be the party of the working class, but for months they’ve restricted them from working and earning a livelihood while white-collar Americans collect their same paychecks at lower working costs.
The people who suffered from these lockdowns were not celebrities or the wealthy but ordinary people who depend on in-person employment. White-collar Americans got lucky— thousands of people just took their work laptops home, and life is different but not economically tougher than it was pre-COVID. However, the lockdown has been a whole different animal for the millions of blue-collar Americans employed in the retail, restaurant, and services industries. When your paycheck depends on people eating at your restaurant or buying from your brick-and-mortar store, lockdowns and restrictions curve business by more than 75% and even stop business altogether. In a low-margin business like restaurants that require the careful purchasing of produce and labor, inconsistency is almost as difficult as shuttering altogether.
In its role as Democratic cheerleader and propaganda enforcer, the media is championing Democratic governors as heroes for their lockdowns. Some political pundits have speculated the lifting of stay at home orders as an attempt to give Joe Biden an economic boom in his first couple weeks in office. Regardless of the validity of that analysis, Biden has shown zero regard for the economy or American workers. In the middle of a pandemic, he shut down the Keystone pipeline, forcing tens of thousands of Americans out of work. Instead of manipulating the economy with shutdowns to create an artificial boom, the Biden administration should focus on keeping American energy and construction workers employed and spending money. The fact remains that COVID and the COVID response is inherently steeped in political manipulation and narrative. President Biden has passed a slew of executive orders aimed at combating the virus, but in reality, the orders are more proclamatory than prescriptive.
While Biden released a 200-page COVID Response, he’s enacting his plan via Executive Order. So far, he’s mandated masks in federal buildings, public transportation and directed agency heads to “assess and identify” actions that could improve vaccine distribution and treatment. Apart from breaking his own mask mandate mere hours after signing the order, the slew of executive orders isn’t a resounding plan like the American public was led to believe Biden had, but a desperate search for response differentiation. While Americans will now be forced to wear masks on 28% of US land and on public transportation (something most Americans have readily avoided since the start of the pandemic), vaccine distribution has expanded on the vaccination strategy and momentum set out in the previous administration. CNN tried to report that Biden and his team inherited “no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration”-- a story that was debunked by Dr. Fauci himself.
While the media continues to cover for Democratic politicians, no effort has been made by Biden to curtail the gross incompetence of lockdown rollouts or the authoritarian state that has emerged from COVID. Democrats blame Republicans for delaying stimulus payments in October, but when given full power, they are more concerned with impeaching a President who doesn’t even hold office. Since taking office, Joe Biden has signed more executive orders in his first days than any other president in history, ranging from removing Trump’s laws, allowing men to participate in women’s sports, extending ObamaCare, and canceling the Keystone Pipeline For a situation as dire and acute as COVID-19 is and was purported by the media to be, there seem to be far more pressing issues on the Biden administration’s mind.
Republicans are mad, and frankly, they have every reason to be. The Democrats claimed lockdowns were necessary to combat COVID, but they’re clearly a mechanism for control: political, social, and economic control. Millions of Americans were put out of work when businesses were forced to close. History won’t remember the hypocrisy of blue-state governors or the Biden administration, but Republicans have to.
Photo via @ivankatrump
