"The Feds Dominate Your Life"
By Bill Bonner
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "The news this morning is focused on a remarkable development. Let’s begin with the press coverage. Here’s USA Today, reporting on the reaction to President Trump’s tweet on returning to the White House from the Walter Reed Medical Center: "Celebrities, political pundits, and critics responded to President Donald Trump’s tweet to not “be afraid of Covid,” calling the message “preposterous” and “dangerous” for the leader of a nation that has surpassed 210,000 deaths to spread." And The New York Times: “Don’t be afraid of Covid,” he wrote. “Don’t let it dominate your life.”
Scientists, ethicists and doctors were outraged by the president’s comments about a disease that has killed nearly 210,000 people in the United States. “I am struggling for words – this is crazy,” said Harald Schmidt, assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is just utterly irresponsible.”
Even his Secret Service agents – according to the Palmer Report – have turned against him… "Current Secret Service agents are privately lashing out at Donald Trump over his reckless disregard for their safety, and those conversations are now leaking to The Washington Post. They’re saying that it’s “so obvious” that Trump has 'never cared about us.'”
Black Death: When POTUS got the coronavirus, the country held its breath. Here was the proof so many had hoped for. The threat was real! All of the hardships and sacrifices of the last seven months were worth it after all. The Donald… after scoffing at the coronavirus… was now getting the divine retribution he had coming. Nearly half the population got down on its knees and beseeched the Almighty. “Please take him away,” they prayed. Trouble was, the threat was not what they had cracked it up to be.
The coronavirus was advertised as an existential threat… a scourge of humanity… a Black Death. Nicholas Kristof, writing in The New York Times back in March, passed along the grim, but dizzy, forecast: "Dr. Neil M. Ferguson, a British epidemiologist who is regarded as one of the best disease modelers in the world, produced a sophisticated model with a worst case of 2.2 million deaths in the United States."
Sophisticated? Maybe. But so far, the worst case is way off the mark. And the way the statistics are compiled – counting everyone who dies “with COVID” as a “COVID death” – probably greatly overstates the actual results.
Lethal Reputation: For most people, the virus is not much of a threat at all. An elderly person might want to check his will. But Trump is right; a healthy person under 60 probably shouldn’t worry about it. And when the fat, 74-year-old President Trump walked out of the hospital after only three days, the cat was out of the bag. Mr. Trump joined a growing list of world leaders – almost all of them old – who had contracted the virus and survived, including the presidents of Brazil, the UK, Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belarus. Despite its lethal reputation, the virus couldn’t kill any of them.
So why make such a fuss about it? Why not just treat it like any other health problem – cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, allergies, murder, or accidents? Why make a federal case out of it? Or to put it in Donald Trump’s words, why let it dominate your life?
No Hard Proof: The goal of politics is to scare people… China, Russia, disease, poverty, racism, alcohol, terrorists, noisemakers, markets, the reds, the reefers – whatever the threat, the feds offer protection. Ban, prohibit… tax, fine… go to war!
Party politics is essentially a contest in which the Democrats and Republicans each claim to be able to protect you better. Of course, in exchange, you give up your money, your privacy, your dignity, and your liberty. The most popular bugaboo du jour is COVID-19. It’s a killer (joining a long list of homicidal ailments; ultimately, nobody beats them all). And there’s no hard proof that the feds can do anything about it.
Lockdown, lockup, face masks, social distancing – a vulnerable person may or may not be able to take precautions and protect himself. But there’s no reason to think that forcing a healthy person – or a whole society – into house arrest has any benefits at all.
Power Grab: Still, the COVID Crisis offers the protection racket a powerful new weapon. The feds can confine you without trial, outlaw popular assembly, close schools, and restrict travel. They’ve already used it to make a breathtaking power grab. In March, they closed down much of the U.S. economy… and then “printed” some $4 trillion fake dollars to protect people from the economic damage. And we’re getting used to it…
Here in Argentina, for example, we have been locked down for seven months. A permanent roadblock has been set up near here. Each time we go to town, we are expected to tell the police where we are going and why… as well as have a travel permit ready for inspection. It almost seems “normal.”
Fact of Life: In the U.S., too, normality dives to the downside to escape the dreaded disease. Soon, it wouldn’t be surprising to find a new CDC “health police,” like the TSA, requiring temperature checks or COVID tests before entering a public building (even though they did nothing to stop the virus in the White House). And the fake money? That’s becoming a fact of life, too. And like a virus, or even the threat of one, it attacks the soft tissue of the brain… Regards."
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