From seven months ago, but some interesting thoughts
...As we reflect upon the readiness with which most of America (to say nothing of that many more millions in countries throughout the world, including the Western world) have acquiesced in what amounts to a sort of internment that has been imposed by their governments upon them in the name of keeping them safe from getting sick, it is imperative that we familiarize ourselves with Arendt’s insights, for there can be no question that “the curious, but quite authentic, inability to think” that first grasped her attention in Eichmann is as ubiquitous and glaring today, in our midst, as it has ever been.
It can, and already has, led to incalculable pain and suffering. It is no stretch to call these evils. Consider all that has occurred over the last six or seven weeks or so, since the dawn of The Great UnReason:
(1Thirty million Americans have been forced into the ranks of the unemployed by government fiat;
(2)Hundreds of thousands of small business owners, upon being forced by the same governmental decrees to close their doors, have been divested of their livelihoods, robbed of the blood, sweat, and tears that they spent years investing in pursuit of their versions of the American Dream;
(3)The Constitutional rights and liberties that define America as the unique nation that it is and for which generations of Americans have sacrificed their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” have been indefinitely revoked by politicians who pledged to protect them;
(4)All of those associations, the myriad of communities that, comprising as they do the whole of civil society, constitute our very identities as the unique human beings that we are; those relationships that transfigure us from the atomistic individuals of liberal political theory and the two-legged animals of Darwinian biology into persons and citizens—these have been substantially eroded by “social distancing;”
(5)People with serious, potentially terminal medical conditions in need of life-saving treatment have been either denied this treatment by hospitals that have cleared the way for COVID patients or they have been discouraged from seeking out that treatment by merchants of fear in positions of power;
(6)Domestic violence has increased substantially;
(7)Suicides are undoubtedly on the rise (though exact numbers are not yet forthcoming), but “news of suicide linked to the COVID-19 crisis have swept the globe” since late March “and sadly show no signs of abating.”
(These suicides, incidentally, are caused both by the panic stoked by a fear-mongering media as well as by the dread of the isolation produced by what Drs. Fauci and Birx and their supporters euphemistically call “mitigation.”)
(8) Depression, anxiety, dejection, despondency, loneliness—all have been observed to have “spiked” in the UK, and in the US;
(9)The wearing of facial coverings in public, by definition, are responsible for reinforcing alienation, distrust, and fear—characteristics that do not a civilization make. While The Virus is most definitely nothing even remotely comparable to the Spanish Flu of 1918 in its lethality, the social repercussions that ensued in the wake of the quarantining that occurred a century ago are almost certainly occurring as a consequence of the “social distancing” orders that are being imposed today;
(10) Due to these “lock downs” of countries throughout the world, hundreds of millions could face “acute hunger” by the end of this year alone, and by virtue of this massive disruption in the “supply chain,” hundreds of millions more could face starvation in the Third World;
(11)Informers have made their appearance in America (and beyond) as the panic-stricken and the virtue-signaling alike have availed themselves of “snitch lines” to report violators of “social distancing” protocols...
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