Backing Off The Narrative?

I've followed Angelo Codevilla for 20 yers, since he outlined the tension between the "ruling class" and the "country class". His most recent piece suggests the lizard people, or whoever it is, have decided to back off the COVID lockdowns.

But as much as the oligarchs enjoyed COVID powers and dreamt of segueing them into a “new normal,” they knew that America could not be locked down forever.

They especially knew, were they to unseat Trump and become responsible for the country, their charges that he had failed to stop the pandemic would come back to haunt them. “Why can’t you stop it?” would be the natural question they would have to face as the virus did what airborne viruses do: spread. Hence, after January 20, dismounting the COVID tiger, albeit gingerly, became the order of the day.

He cites in particular California Gov Newsom's lifting of his regional supplementary lockdown on Monday. After Codevilla wrote, New York Gov Cuomo made a similar move, though he waited some days to do so after telegraphing it last week.

I'm not sure this signals any sort of beginning-of-the-end for the lockdowns. The restrictions both Newsom and Cuomo lifted were supplemental impositions over and above those that had been in effect, and remain so now, over much of 2020. For instance, I can (for now) legally get a haircut in Califonria, but barber shops are still essentially restricted to one customer at a time, no matteer how many barbers or chairs are in the place, so the barbers are still losing money, and customers have to scramble to book appointments.

And both Newsom and Cuomo are weak men with histories of vacillation. If either the media or the lizard people tell them to clamp down again, they'll do it. In addition, while Los Angeles County has allowed some measure of indoor worship since December, the rest of the state does not, and LA County can prohibit it again at any time based purely on someone's whim.

It reminds me of an exchange someone reported to Scott Adams a while ago. Two people are driving n a car. One asks, "I wonder how much that job pays."

What job?" asks the other.

"The job where you change the traffic lights from red to green."

That job pays what the governors of New York and California are paid. It's not a good sign that Dr Fauci is now musing about making people wear two masks. So far, he hasn't advocated doubling social distancing to 12 feet, but it's probably not a good idea to give him ideas.

The YouTube commentator Hard Bastard, one of the best, has family background in Jehovah's Witnesses and sometimes draws parallels with cult behavior in society at large. The other day he noted that the Kingdom, unlike observant Christians and Jews, has endorsed government prohibitions on group gatherings, indoor worship, and proselytizing door to door. (Indeed, Hard Bastard says since Witnesses are not saved by the Blood of Christ but instead by going door to door, this is a critical ocncession for them to make.)

Hard Bastard concludes that Jehovah's Witnesses are deeply impressed by the opportunities for control the COVID crisis has given petty authorities, and they endorse it.

I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon. It's worth noting that Trump had no strategy to deal with the lockdowns all last year, he erred gravely in elevating Dr Fauci as an authority, and in my view, it's a mark against his record. For now, nobody has a coherent strategy. This is urgently needed.