When Covid-19 reared its ugly head at the beginning of 2020, Democrat leaders invoked their longstanding fearmongering strategy based on never letting a crisis go to waste. That cynical advice was proffered by former White House Chief-of-Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who said:
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Facts be known, Emanuel was committing “a Biden: by plagiarizing the quote from Winston Churchill.
When Democrats take advantage of a crisis, the things “you could not do before” always relates to growing the power of the federal government – and the Democratic Party.
In the case of Covid-19, Democrats were joined in fearmongering by a medical industry that would gain tons of money from the big spending rescue and relief plans. They accused President Trump of playing down the magnitude of the crisis while they were building it up.
Even as the Covid-19 is ratcheting down, the Democrats and medical community are continuing to use scare tactics to pour more money into the crisis – even though we have not yet used all the money provided at the end of the Trump administration.
With their myopic focus on Covid-19, the politicians and the scientists played down the health impact of the lockdown. The surging national economy was shut down for a disease that 90 percent of the American people would never even contract.
But that created an unemployment crisis which Democrats were more than happy to address with trillions of additional dollars in government spending.
Now we must face the fact that the cure may have been worse than the disease. Many Republicans expressed that concern only to be demonized by the Democrats’ fellow travelers in the once-honorable news business.
But now the chickens have come to roost. They now claim that the shutdown has created a public health crisis of its own – and act as if they are surprised. Keeping children out of school, isolated at home and living in ever present fear that Covid-19 is a viral boogeyman who will attack them in their sleep – or deprive them of their parents and grandparents – is one sure way to scare the Hell out of the kids. The results are now a matter of statistics – found in the soaring rates of childhood depression and teenage suicides.
Adults have not fared any better. Depression and suicide are soaring among those who have lost social interchange and their jobs – their livelihoods. Drug addiction and drug related deaths are also increasing beyond “normal” levels.
And then there is crime. Murders up. Mass shootings up. Robberies up. Rioting and vandalism up. Many of the most serious crimes are breaking records.
The shutdown destroyed the careers and businesses of millions of Americans – and killed, directly or indirectly, hundreds of thousands.
The tally of these people is not flashed on the television screens on a daily basis. They are the hidden victims of the overly extensive Covid-19 shutdown. And America will be paying the price in lost lives for the foreseeable future – even as the virus disappears.
So, there ‘tis.
