Nicholas J. Kaster’s column today at American Thinker has a sobering analysis of the local and state governments’ endless mask mandates, lockdowns, and other joys of the never-ending pandemic:
We have entered the seventh month of coronavirus panic, with
large parts of America still partly or wholly shut down. What began as a 15-day
expedient designed to “flatten the curve,” has gradually become the norm in
American life. The goalposts have continued to shift. First, the focus was on
hospital overcrowding; then it moved to overall deaths; then it moved to number
of positive cases; now it seems to be shifting to the availability of a
vaccine. The real endgame appears to be the November election.
. . .
Many have seen parallels in this
creeping authoritarianism to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. And
indeed, there are some: the obsessive mask conformity, the endless and often
contradictory edicts by state governors and mayors, and the tiresome mantras
celebrating obedience (e.g., “Alone together”).
But a closer analogy to our current
predicament can be found in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Huxley’s
novel, published in 1932, 17 years before Orwell’s, envisions a dystopia that
is sated but soulless, where the people’s every earthly need is met, but at the
cost of their liberty and humanity.
. . .
The idea of a riskless utopia is pure fantasy, of course, but
the power that will accrete to the ruling class is very real.
Mr. Kaster’s column is here.
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