Posted on 06/18/2020 7:45:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
By treating Black Lives Matters protests differently than other large gatherings, public officials and health experts have exposed themselves as hypocrites.
We’re told a second wave of coronavirus infections is coming. As businesses open back up and states relax lockdown orders, the number of new cases is ticking up in a handful of states. We’ve heard warnings in recent days from the Centers for Disease Control and various public health experts and elected officials that a new series of lockdowns might be necessary.
What these experts and officials don’t seem to realize is that Americans will never comply with their lockdown orders again. They have burned their credibility to the ground, and they no longer have the moral authority to tell us what to do.
Simply put, the people in charge have shown themselves to be rank hypocrites who care more about politics than science. For months, we were told that large gatherings were deadly because of the coronavirus, but when protests broke out in late May, large gatherings were suddenly okay.
The exact day the experts lost their credibility was June 4, when more than 1,000 public health workers signed a letter claiming the protests were “vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States.” The woke corporate press scrambled to assure us this wasn’t hypocritical at all, and that “health is about more than simply remaining free of coronavirus infection,” as a pair of epidemiologists put it in The Atlantic.
That’s a curious argument to make after forced business closures and lockdown orders destroyed tens of millions of American jobs, ruined countless businesses and livelihoods, and caused a sharp uptick in suicides, drug overdoses, and domestic abuse. Never mind the compelling research that lockdowns are overall much worse for public health than the coronavirus.
But if public health experts cared about more than just steering clear of the coronavirus at any cost, you wouldn’t have known it based on their pandemic policies—that is, until the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter (BLM) rallies came along. Here at last was something more important than stopping the virus.
And it wasn’t just public health experts. Elected officials were all too willing to use their power to promote ideology at the expense of public health—and then turn around and punish disfavored groups in the name of public health.
Witness the appalling double standard of men like New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio. On Monday, city workers welded shut the gates of a Brooklyn playground frequented by members of the Hasidic Jewish community in Williamsburg. They claimed it was necessary to stop the spread of the coronavirus. But this happened one day after the city allowed a massive “Black Trans Lives Matter” rally in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza that attracted thousands of protesters packed together in close quarters.
Brooklyn today, #BlackLivesMatter
[email protected] pic.twitter.com/zSWSKoWK51— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) June 14, 2020
Officially, large gatherings are still banned in New York as part of the city’s pandemic response. So are playgrounds, including the one whose gates were welded shut Monday, because the city “found a lack of regard for social distancing” at the parks, according to a de Blasio spokeswoman.
There are two only possible conclusions here. Either de Blasio somehow believes that catching COVID-19 isn’t a risk if you’re at a BLM rally, or he doesn’t actually care about preventing the spread of the virus and wants to use the pandemic to exercise arbitrary power over New Yorkers, punishing those who defy him and indulging those who share his political views.
Either way, no one should take anything de Blasio says about the pandemic seriously, and no New Yorker should ever again obey a lockdown order issued from his office.
The same story is playing out all over the country. Mayors who did nothing to prevent mass protests in recent weeks—and in some cases joined protesters, in violation of their own lockdown orders—have maintained draconian restrictions on other types of gatherings, stricktly limiting the number of people who can congregate in restaurants, shops, gyms, and houses of worship.
In Washington, D.C., which has seen days on end of massive BLM protests, some numbering in the hundreds of thousands, Mayor Muriel Bowser on Wednesday announced the city would begin “phase 2” of its reopening next week. For restaurants, that means no more than 50 percent capacity, tables six feet apart, and all diners must be seated at the tables.
Same thing in Los Angeles, where thousands converged on Hollywood Boulevard Sunday for a Black Trans Lives Matter rally. Video footage of the event showed attendees packed tightly together on the street, with no possibility of social distancing. According to news reports, there were no police present at the rally, and the city made no effort to stop it or limit attendance.
But like D.C. and other cities, Los Angeles still has strict pandemic policies for businesses, churches, and just about everything else. For houses of worship, the city has issued elaborate guidelines for reopening, including a limit to the total number of people, clergy, and parishioners combined, who can attend a service: 25 percent of building capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower.
Why these restrictions should apply to churches but not to massive political protests, the city does not say. It’s all very confusing.
The starkest contradiction of all might be the reactions to President Trump’s rally planned for Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Local health officials are warning it could become a disastrous “super spreader” event—a term media outlets like The New York Times have been eager to repeat under headlines warning, “Trump’s rally in Tulsa Could Spread Virus,” using language they would never use to describe any of the large-scale protests, rallies, and riots nationwide.
Some media pundits make no apologies for this obvious double standard. Tuesday on ABC’s “The View,” Joy Behar claimed Trump doesn’t care about his supporters’ health and safety because he’s willing to hold a rally amid the pandemic, and that his rally is more risky than the protests because it’ll be indoors, whereas the protests are mostly outdoors. Okay, Joy.
Public officials in Tulsa have also adopted this double standard. The mayor and a cadre of other officials have publicly implored Trump not to go ahead with the rally, citing concerns about COVID-19. But these same officials dared not say a word against recent BLM rallies held in the city and suburbs, including a large one that got out of control and spilled onto a busy highway, where several protesters were injured.
The double standard is everywhere and undeniable, and the message is clear: the experts and the people in charge only care about the pandemic when it’s politically convenient. They’re guided by the science, they tell us, but only if the science doesn’t get in the way of their virtue-signaling about Black Lives Matter.
They care about public health, but only up to a point. They care much more about being woke. And if you want to go to a big rally, it’s only safe if it’s the right kind of rally.
Enough of this. Americans should never listen to these people again.
A lot of Americans aren’t obeying lockdown orders. But they can’t force employers to open doors again. With no work to go to and no income, a lot of people have no choice but to stay home.
I don’t think hypocrite is the correct word to describe American politicians and “health” officials. It is not nearly strong enough.
These people are traitors to the principles of America and to the principles of science. They have facilitated and even advocated an insurrection against both lawful order and natural law. By accomplishing the destruction of America, it is far too mild to allege that they are hypocrites.
Further, the implication of the word “hypocrite” is one who publicly advocates an ideal good for others but privately behaves in contrary fashion. It is becoming apparent that many politicians and “health” officials are actually advocate evil.
“Riot season”
Hey, Mr. Davidson ... They never should have complied with the orders in the first place.
Calif governor Hair Gel Newsom is thinking about mandating everyone wear face masks state wide!
He is involved in a $1.4 billion scam with face masks. The money going to insiders and useless masks being produced.
He has to cover up the theft.
It’s pretty clear that this is 100% about stopping Trump rallies.
Bingo!
And they want to damage the economy as much as possible so the President not only can't claim a roaring economy, but people are embittered.
Long live Ron who is a businessman. I am in FL and long rule Ron! Which I think will be Eight years, then he is term limited out. I live in a crap-tastic Democrat county but even here the Democrats restrain themselves and are small business oriented.
We ignored all this crap from day one... never had a flu shot... never got the flu... so why all the hyper-fear?
Governor overrides the judge in Texas. He can recommend whatever he wants, but it can’t be enforced.
You would think. But Nelson is an asrse hole. With super powers.
Abbott has forbidden cities and counties from requiring residents to wear face coverings and imposing jail time for those who don’t wear masks. The governor has repeatedly brushed off pleas from local officials to allow them to do so.
RELATED: More than 400 new cases reported in Bexar County
“The action that I’m taking today may be pushing the legal bounds a little bit,” Wolff said. “But our attorneys believe we can defend this order in court.”
“Judge Wolff’s order is not inconsistent with the governor’s executive order,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said.
Preach it’!!!!!!!!
I hope he runs for President after he’s done being Governor!
That’s Bizzarre- I don’t think Wittman speaks the same English Language that we do. Although the double negative legalese “is not inconsistent” certainly leaves room for the governors office to change course later.
I like my Governor Abbott. I do.
But like all politicians - Doublespeak is their primary language.
A faction of the ruling class is in a state of total war against the middle class working class. They want us dead, not merely compliant.
Uh, I live in San Antonio....and the above is wrong. Masks were NEVER mandatory prior to the institution of the NEW emergency order which went into effect yesterday.
See post 33 for further details.
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