Taking Liberties: Snitch Lines, Home Invasion & Cuffed Dads

Notes from a pandemic: Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has asked Angelenos to "snitch" on neighbours who aren't complying with stay-at-home orders. ”You know the old expression about snitches," Garcetti told as media gathering. "Well, in this case, snitches get rewards. We want to thank you for turning folks in and making sure we are all safe.”

Meanwhile World Health Organization official Mike Ryan stated on March 30 that, with the virus now largely confined within quarantined families, it’s time for the WHO to “go and look in (those) families to find the people who may be sick and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner.”

A father in Colorado was “cuffed and arrested in front of his six-year-old daughter for playing T-ball with her in an empty park.”

If you’re not alarmed by the people who want to arrest T-ball parents or create neighbour tattle-tales then you’re clearly missing this lesson of the Covid-19 exercise. In the name of trying to halt a pernicious virus, officials in power will go full rogue on your cherished liberty if you let them.

Now, they’re supposedly doing it all in the name of a good cause. Their hearts are pure, their intentions noble, etc. But people who once rent their garment over asylum-seeking illegals being separated from their children at the borders are suddenly “no big whoop” about the WHO and its confederates breaking into the homes of citizens to triage the occupants. 

It’s now considered leadership when the mayor of America’s second-largest city channels his Lavrentiy Beria, encouraging neighbours to turn on each other— for a nifty reward. 

Sure, it’s “wartime” and when people are stressed things get done that aren’t so pretty. (Just catch a Trump press conference.) But while the White House press corps and the fainting goats of NeverTrump Land hurl charges of “tyrant” and “autocrat” against Orange Man Bad, they seem to have no issues with their fellow travellers in government breaking a few eggs to make a civil-liberties omelette.

In their obsession to pin the Covid-19 deaths on Trump (“does he have blood on is hands?” asked NBC’s Chuck Todd), they have nothing to say about running a Winston Smith “1984” playbook to keep everyone with the program.

And who loves the massive sweep of government power more than the climate-change clergy (which has bitterly protesting the attention given to Covid-19 at the exclusion of their sacred crusade)? Paris Accord devotees have been desperately trying to create a media link between the dreaded virus and their conviction that our world is about to drown in a CO2 bath. Their fellow travellers in the press are likewise keening for someone to pay attention to their Gaia-flavoured cookies.

The only link between that can be established is their mutual reliance on the computer modelling that produces the daily death tolls being spit out in the U.S. and U.K. The deadly arc of the infection is graphically modelled in televised press conferences at every level but one (take a bow, M. Trudeau). These frightening results have sent the entire world into seclusion, freezing the global economy and creating a cowed, frightened population. 

Because no crisis is allowed to be wasted, the leaders of the Al Gore Club now see a blueprint for the success denied them by voters, judges and common sense. They have learned that, returned to power in Washington, the clever green warriors can get the levers of power in their sweaty palms by stoking a global climate crisis using computer-modelled massive death and dislocation in the offing. 

Mayor Garcetti will offer snitch money to those whose neighbours are seen leaving the porch light on. Paris Accord police will break down the doors of homes that still have fireplaces. Skippy the Wonder PM will urge Canadians to join him in seclusion. With the computer models spitting out disaster pesky “deniers” can finally dispatched to the gaseous gulag.

The only problem with the models employed against Covid— and justifying the draconian snitch culture— is that the damn things don’t seem to work properly. While the computers are fairly accurate about the lagging death counts they have been hopeless about today’s projections on hospitalizations. In spite of continual updates, the models are missing by a factor of tens of thousands on how many beds are needed to meet a projected wave of victims who, outside hot spots in NYC, New Orleans, Detroit and Washington DC, are not throwing themselves at the mercy of medical science.

Some guesses by embedded media are being made to explain the gap— people dying at home, extra bed capacity— but mistaken modelling threatens to undermine the civic authority keeping people crammed inside with Uncle Herb and Grandma Madge and away from their pay cheques. If you can’t believe the numbers why are we letting your RRSP disintegrate?

This has to concern the Catherine McKennas who’ve told Canadians they must trust modelling for 50 years in the future when the “experts” can’t even get reliable numbers for the next week. They’ll be working diligently with their media friends to make sure that this fact is deep-sixed along with the prime minister’s sexual proclivities, his mysterious self-quarantine and his black-face repetoire.

Time to frame the narrative is getting short, however. The collision between the authority of “expert” classes and the population they presume to rule is coming fast. Expect nothing less than a seismic rupture unless those planning to wreck the economy can do better than wonky computer models and snitch lines to intimidate the population.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of Cap In Hand which is available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca