Global Hysteria

Just so as not to obsess over the idea of impeaching a US president after he's left office (when it seems to me the mature adult reaction would be more or less to say "good riddance, let's go on with life"), I draw your attention to the video above frm a UK YouTuber who discusses a case of UK police who've imposed a £200 fine on two ladies who took a walk and bought coffee while socially distanced.

The exact circumstances aren't clear, largely because I can't understand the accents of those speaking on the video, but it appears that a central issue is that the ladies are allowed to leave their homes only once a day for exercise, but the police had been watching them and appear to have detected that this is the second walk they've taken today.

In the US, thank a merciful Providence, law enforcement has made it clear that it does not see this type of activity within its responsibility, and generally US civil authorities haven't specified how often we're allowed to take a walk, although Mayor Garcetti has said walks must be of an essential character.

But let's not get too comfortable. Miya Ponsetto, the SoHo Karen who hysterically accosted a black teen in a hotel lobby thinking he'd stolen her phone, was arrested and brought back to New York from California to face an assortment of charges. Accounts suggest as many as four NYPD officers were detailed to do this.

But this leaves aside that big question I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on: even if Trump's response to the election was ultimately erratic and even delusional, why not just keep an eye on the guy, get him focused on packing to leave, and help him to the helicopter Wednesday week?

It sounds as thuogh the US congress will instead be spending some weeks or months trying to remove him from office when he'll already be gone, except that even if the House predictably votes to impeach, it seems pretty remote that the Senate would vote to remove anyhow. This goes beyond kabuki. This is hysterical psychodrama.

Aristotelians look for causes. The received wisdom about moral panics is that they result from underlying social tension. Since early 2020, hysteria has been visible -- the run on toilet paper came the first week in March, before any lockdowns were imposed. This suggests to me that people sensed something was up even before then, and there was an instinctive expectation that there would be some type of counterproductive government decree no matter what -- and they'd better be ready.

People aren't stupid. The underlying tensions were already there, and COVID just happened to come along at the right time. The deacon who gave the homily at yesterday's mass made a point I've been seeing for some time now: people thought 2020 would go away with the new year, but it hasn't. The underlying tensions are still there. You'd think, for instance, that with a COVID vaccine available, the civil authorities would be acting quickly to distribute it and plan for concurrent easing of restrictions.

No, they're slow-walking distribution and acting as though the lockdowns will just continue. Vaccine isn't the solution.

This is a global phenomenon, not limited to just the US, so Trump alone isn't the issue, and he's going away, but cearly he still needs to be exorcised. The Democrats won an election, but they're still unhappy.

Why?