"They Hit the Pause Button and the Music Stopped"
by Jeffrey Tucker
Excerpt: "In the great search for metaphors to justify the largest-scale violations of human rights in our lifetimes, the disease managers finally hit on the term “pause button.” We were merely pressing it for a while to get our bearings, un-overload hospitals, gather personal protective equipment, flatten the curve, and generally figure out what to do in the presence of a new virus. They had to pause you so that they could figure it out.
Here is a typical headline, this one from the Los Angeles Times: "San Diego State Hits pause Button as COVID-19 Cases Grow." We all know what a pause button is in real life. The music is playing and then it is not. But you can press the button again and the music will play. Society, then, in all its unfathomable complexity, was rendered as a song on Spotify playing on a machine over which our masters in public health held the controls. It was like a smartphone: push and release. No big deal. Well, it did turn out as a pause, not for 15 days, or even 30, but all the way for three years. The pause button jammed.
The pause button pertained not just to earth but heaven too. Three years ago, during Lent, Christians could not go to their parishes to confess their sins as they had for 2,000 years in preparation for Easter. The most important Eucharistic services of the year – during which time the faithful receive grace from a host with real presence of God – were flat-out canceled, as were the other sacraments. One supposes that they assume God too is under their control.
Incredibly, the complaints were few, particularly from the clergy who chose compliance over faith. Those who shut their doors for one or even two years are now paying a heavy price for the decision. The leadership essentially announced that they were not essential. Parishioners and congregations decided to take them at their word.
But it wasn’t just worship services. It was everything. And by everything we can include supply chains, industrial manufacturing, artistic creativity, seasonal changes in fashion, and the timeline of history itself. Commercial life came to a standstill. Unless you wanted liquor or weed – all the better to calm down a locked-down population – you were pretty much out of luck."
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