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credit: babylonbee

Throughout the nation, stores, restaurants, theaters, accommodations of all kinds are limiting hours or closing.  Schools are closing, professional sports are canceled, and a sort of low-grade panic is at large.  The stock market plunges, then rallies, and layoffs are common.  Savings have been lost and pensions are threatened.  The federal government is passing measures that will soon inject as much as $1.3 trillion dollars into the economy.  President Trump’s chief economic advisor, Larry Kudlow suggests the damage will be short term:  

Kudlow said the outbreak will only cause short term economic damage, calling it a ‘matter of weeks or months, not years.’

‘We are putting in place a number of economic measures which will help the economy, individuals, small businesses,’ he reiterated. ‘That’s the best we can do.’

There are good reasons to believe Kudlow’s forecast is correct.  Take this link to an article by my pal Bookworm.  It contains great information, her usual insightful commentary, a classic song, and other reasons to believe things aren’t nearly as bad as the D/S/C media portray them.  Even so, there will be damage, not just to businesses, but to individual families.

A question of some import I’m not yet seeing widely considered is this: have we fallen into a “new normal” that will roil America—to say nothing of the rest of the world—whenever a new virus spreads?  In other words, just who are we, and who are we to become?

This is arguably the most politicized contagion in American history.  Thus far, the American death toll is far smaller than the death toll of the annual, seasonal flu, and it appears it will remain so, yet the D/S/C propaganda minions with bylines of our media have gone to unprecedented lengths to cause a panic which is causing unprecedented damage, all in the hope of using the Coronavirus to destroy Donald Trump where all else has failed.  They initially criticized everything he said or didn’t say and everything he did or didn’t do, despite the fact that the heads of international health agencies have praised his rapid and effective response.  They went absolutely berserk when Mr. Trump referred to the virus as the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese virus.”  

The media have spread a variety of lies, including that Mr. Trump has defunded the CDC, and that Mr. Trump disbanded the federal pandemic office.  CNN’s Alejandra Rojas admitted—on air—that CNN wants Trump out of office.   Surely, they, and much of the rest of the media, do, but they generally don’t admit it so blatantly.  Is this desperation, or do they really think this will do Trump in and see no reason to hide their true feelings?

One CNN analyst went so far as to suggest Mr. Trump is guilty of negligent homicide or manslaughter for his response to the virus.  Bizarrely, MSNBC Trump basher Joe Scarborough has actually praised Mr. Trump’s virus response, and CNN’s Dana Bash has also praised Mr. Trump’s response.  Is this a sudden infusion of sanity into two of the most virulently anti-Trump, anti-American networks, or just another sign of how bizarre the panic surrounding the current crisis has become?  Is honest, responsible  reporting and rational thought too much to expect of our media?

D/S/C presidential frontrunner Joe Biden continues to contribute to the panic with lies and misrepresentations.  As I recently noted in Democrat Debate #11: The Democrat Party Is Dead, Biden criticized Mr. Trump’s actions, while stealing virtually every aspect of his response to date, and his future response plans.

Far more Republicans than D/S/Cs have an optimistic view of the eventual, rapid resolution of this contagion and its fallout.  This is to be expected of people whose moral compasses are so skewed they’re willing to see American’s lives ruined, they’re willing to see them die, in their deranged pursuit of political power.  If they can blame the virus, somehow, on Trump and do away with him it’s worth it.  A D/S/C never Trump ally wished the virus on Mrs. Trump, and thankfully, has been savaged for it:

This is a good thing; it’s a sign American decency yet lives and cannot be crushed by a contagion.

We find ourselves, once again—still?–in a situation where D/S/Cs are more than willing to do whatever damage is necessary to America and Americans in order to finally, once and for all, get Trump and gain ultimate political power.  Truth is irrelevant and beside the point when the point is not allowing a crisis to go to waste in the pursuit of power.  Yet this attempt also seems doomed to failure.  Not only was Mr. Trump’s response fast and correct, it has proved effective.  Closing travel to China was a common sense, entirely rational thing to do, still he was called a racist and xenophobe.  Calling a virus from China a Chinese virus is sanity, not racism.  Most Americans know better.

Previously spouted bits of received wisdom among the self-imagined elite have been rendered impotent by the virus.  The border wall does help stop the spread of disease as well as its other positive effects.  Single use, plastic grocery bags are far safer than cloth bags.  Firearms are very useful indeed when law and order breaks down.  In an economic disaster when huge numbers of Americans are out of work, the solution is not increased immigration of people with few or no skills.

The clamoring for virus tests is irrational.  If one has no symptoms, no test is necessary. If they have mild symptoms, the same applies.  Only those in high-risk groups with obvious and serious symptoms actually need tests.  From what is now known, most people infected won’t ever know it and will completely recover.  Worse, there is no single, entirely accurate test.  

The current pseudo-panic is arguably unprecedented.  Never in American history has this kind of near total disruption of daily life occurred in response to a contagion which to date, has been far less threatening than seasonal flu.  The kindest and best explanation is a perfect storm of political factors which have conspired to do incredible damage to America.  “Best” because when those political factors no longer attain, future contagions will be dealt with far more rationally and without devastating damage to our economy.  Or will they?

D/S/Cs, which includes the media, Hollywood, the academy, much of the tech world—I love Apple computers but very much dislike their hateful politics—and substantial portions of our federal government and judiciary, have never accepted the results of the 2016 presidential election and have been doing enormous damage to America in their never-ending coup attempts.  Their response to the Coronavirus is just another doomed attempt to do enough harm to Donald Trump to elect Joe Biden, or whatever socialist/communist they replace him with at the last minute.

They are hoping Americans have become what they are: weak, whining, entitled, cowardly, selfish, cruel haters of America and normal Americans.  They hope their attempts to remake America in their image, to fundamentally transform human nature, will succeed enough to get them into power, and once in power, they will do whatever is necessary to ensure they will never lose it.  They will fundamentally transform America, and a lack of toilet paper will be the least of our worries.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  If the current situation is entirely politically driven, can we expect this to be a one-off, a unique catastrophe that will not happen when the next contagion inevitably spreads, likely from China as so many others have?    Judging by the past, and present, if the president is a D/S/C, yes.  Barack Obama’s casual response to contagions during his eight years in office, accompanied by no real media criticism, is a case in point.  Whatever economic damage is done in the future will be either ignored, or blamed on Republicans.

Mr. Trump, desirous of a second term, is surely taking steps he might not otherwise take as defensive political medicine.  But if Mr. Trump wins a second term, are we entering into an even worse political climate?  It’s unimaginable that D/S/Cs will suddenly decide to embrace American Constitutionalism.  They will not accept a second Trump election, and will redouble their resistance efforts, which is likely already a permanent feature of American politics, unless, that is, they take ultimate power.  Any Republican in the White House will almost certainly face a “resistance” of a ferocity dependent on their actual dedication to the Constitution and the rule of law, in effect, dependent on their resistance to D/S/C orthodoxy.

A D/S/C president will have more or less a free ride.  They’ll be free to ensure any response to a contagion will be, above all, politically correct. There will be no accurate representations of where the virus began, why, or how the totalitarian rulers of that nation made it worse. That’s mean and it doesn’t blame America first.   They can rely on international/global authorities and open borders rather than science and actually effective measures to deal with a contagion whose true dimensions will never be accurately reported.

The indispensable Victor Davis Hanson suggests the Coronavirus will substantially damage China.  Perhaps so, and that can only be good for America.  Outsourcing much of our essential drug production and other goods to a communist enemy was insane.

Certainly, for Normal Americans, whatever tiny bit of respect for the media they may have retained, is gone.  They have no credibility.  This too is a good thing–not their lack of credibility, but the fact Americans recognize they can’t be trusted.  Normal Americans have always known China is no friend of America, rather it’s an imminent danger America will almost certainly have to, one day, militarily confront.

Perhaps the virus is also a clarifying force.  It is giving us the opportunity to determine just who, as a people, as a force for good in the world, we are.  Will we continue to be a kind, moral and generous people who have, on multiple occasions, saved the world?  Will we continue to be the nation to which all honest people look for moral guidance, the shining city on the hill, the, intellectual, economic engine of liberty?  Will we continue to value individual liberty and the rule of law, or will we go the way of globalism?  Even Italy, abandoned by it’s supposed EU partners, is beginning to see the truth of globalism and the European Union, which is primarily a means of propping up Germany and France.  Expect more nations to exit that political abomination after the virus runs its course.

Will we learn from thousands of years of history and rebuild ourselves as a united nation?  Or will it become necessary to split America in two, into a red nation under a revised and more explicit Constitution, unmistakably enshrining the rule of law and individual liberty, and a blue nation of unlimited governmental power, “free” stuff, ubiquitous political correctness and no liberty?  Will this potentially unremarkable virus be the crucible from which a new reality emerges, or will we remained mired in the kind of hatred that has driven a once-loyal political party so far to the left its standard bearer is all but indistinguishable from the despots ruling third world dictatorships?

Who are we, really?