With apologies in advance to Bob Dylan for mangling his lyrics, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the hurricane blows, and in that vein, some Democratic leaders across the 50 states – having received the memo that their draconian, interminable and ponderous COVID response is about to blow them out of the water, electorally-speaking – have started falling all over themselves to not just ease pandemic restrictions, but act like they’re the first ones to be doing so.
This is going to be endlessly entertaining for at least four reasons that spring to mind. The bullet-points, please:
• Will the White House staff accept that they need to shift strategy, too, and will the elderly gent occupying the presidency be able to emotionally move beyond his lockdowns-today/lockdowns-tomorrow/lockdowns-forever strategy he’s embraced since the campaign of 2020?
• If so, will the White House be able to get the ever-resistant Dr. Anthony “I Am Science and Science Is Moi” Fauci to go along, or will that secular saint (albeit with the slightly tarnished halo) continue to instruct (via CNN) his acolytes to resist any effort to ease any restrictions?
• Will the Northern Virginia school districts, and those like them, which are emotionally invested in masking to a perhaps psychologically unhealthy degree, also be able to pivot to a more rational and less iron-fisted approach, while simultaneously declaring their actions had been right all along?
• And what about those one sees wandering outside, alone, or locked in their cars, alone, in their low-grade cloth coverings that by now we know to be basically useless? They’ve embraced masking with the fervor of a religious convert, and have become comfortable in the snug fit of both a mask and the mantle of self-righteousness it provides.
Of course, those of us of a conspiratorial bent wonder if, before any of this transpires and those various factions begin battling among themselves, another variant might somehow be loosed upon an unsuspecting world.
That certainly would be an, mmmm, convenient expedient for those disinclined to give up the power they’ve lorded over the populace lo these two years, wouldn’t it?
- Scott McCaffrey