It is Big Government and Big Media actors that are responsible for having inflicted incalculable damage, of all conceivable sorts, upon hundreds of millions of human beings within the United States.<\/p>\n
To be clear, it is not \u201cThe <\/em>Pandemic,\u201d COVID-19, i.e. \u201cThe <\/em>Virus,\u201d that has forced tens of millions of American workers, as great as any number since the Great Depression, to join the ranks of the unemployed.<\/p>\n It is politicians, thanks to no small measure of assistance from their apologists and fellow fear-mongers in Big Media, who are responsible for this.<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that have forced countless thousands of small business owners to shutter their doors, hence forgoing their American Dream and the thousands upon thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears that they invested in pursuit of realizing that Dream.<\/p>\n It is Big Government and Big Media actors and not some virus that have systematically undercut what Edmund Burke referred to as \u201cthe little platoons,\u201d all of those institutions in the absence of which civilization would be inconceivable.\u00a0 These are the institutions of family, friendships, and all of those local communities, religious and otherwise, that constitute the identities of their members, invest their lives with value, meaning, and purpose, and, insofar as they are intermediate between the individual and the State, serve as a \u201ccheck and balance\u201d on the power of government over the citizen.<\/p>\n Through the decrees of states\u2019 governors, supported by a propaganda campaign that is as incessant as it is ubiquitous\u2014Flatten the Curve! Stop the Spread! Stay at Home! Social Distancing! Save Lives!\u2014<\/em>Big Government and Big Media actors have eroded away at these life-saving, life-enriching, associations, these \u201clittle platoons.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that have relegated the Bill of Rights to something that is \u201cabove the paygrade\u201d<\/a> of the very people, those like New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who swore an oath to defend it.<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that have indefinitely revoked both the United States Constitution as well as the constitutions of the individual states that are based upon it.<\/p>\n It is the actors of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that have recently spent trillions of dollars in \u201crelief\u201d aid to American citizens who they <\/em>never should have forced into unemployment in the first place.<\/p>\n It is the men and women in Big Government and Big Media and not some virus who, in arranging for the closure of parks, commerce, schools, and all recreational events, have shuttered civil society.<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus who, despite assurances that our hospitals could be overwhelmed, have left hospitals across the country, including New York City\u2019s largest emergency room<\/a>, largely empty, <\/em>and possibly \u201csoon closed for good.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus who assured us that even with \u201cmitigation protocols\u201d observed, <\/em>as many as 1.1 million Americans could die<\/a> from COVID-19 (a number that some of us knew then was preposterous on its face and that has since been revised down to 60,000<\/em>\u2014about that of the seasonal flu but still, because of CDC guidelines that can only result in the inflation of Virus deaths<\/a>, is still\u00a0 undoubtedly too high).<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus who are responsible for the increases in the instances of suicide, domestic violence, depression, drug and alcohol use, anxiety, despondency, dejection, and loneliness that accompany the state of alienation into which hundreds of millions of Americans have been forced.<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that have set neighbor against neighbor by establishing and encouraging the use of \u201csnitch lines\u201d: a ready means by which citizens can facilitate the arrests of those of their fellow citizens who they believe are defying \u201csocial distancing\u201d decrees.<\/p>\n It is the agents of Big Government and Big Media and not some virus that are undoing the glue holding civilization together by fostering social distrust via fiats demanding the wearing of \u201cfacial coverings.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mask\u2014there is possibly no greater symbol of distrust, alienation, and fear than this.<\/p>\n