We’ve been conditioned to accept the mandates of virtue-signaling, busy-body bureaucrats.
Plenty of examples in the world of sports.
There’s no doubt about it. I’m different than most people. This thought was reinforced in me two years ago when a wave of football games were cancelled “because of COVID.”
Most people believe these games were cancelled because of the “health and safety risks” COVID posed to football players (pro, college or high school).
The reason I’m different is because I read the same stories and listened to the same sports talk programs yet reached a completely different conclusion: These games were not cancelled because a virus was going to get us … they were cancelled because of the unnecessary, dumb policies bureaucrats and authorities created to (purportedly) mitigate alleged “risks.”
I also imagine that very few Americans view this issue as I do: a sneaky or easy way for authorities to further flex their bureaucratic muscles.
The “college-football-has-plunged-into-chaos” story from 2020 also caused me to reflect on the central role bureaucrats, politicians, and the media play in defining the way Americans think about just about every subject.
Please cite your evidence
As anyone who has done any COVID research should have known YEARS ago, COVID-19 never posed a health and safety risk to healthy young Americans, especially well-conditioned athletes.
The vast majority of young Americans who tested positive for COVID never even become sick. That is, they were asymptomatic.
For example, of the very small percentage of the approximately 35,000 students at the University of Alabama who had “tested positive” for COVID-19 as of mid-September 2020, only 20 to 25 percent actually had symptoms, according to the University’s Dean of Health. Of the small percentage who did experience symptoms, “very few” had significant symptoms. So from this sizable sample, we learned that 75-80 percent of the students who tested positive were asymptomatic. That is, almost all of the official “cases” certainly weren’t “medical cases.”
Additionally, among the athletes who do contract the virus, 99.99 percent seem to recover as if nothing happened to them. I still remember when Dustin Johnson set the record for the lowest score at The Masters golf tournament …. a month after testing positive for COVID-19.
In a rational world, two questions would carry the greatest weight when assessing the health and safety risks of athletes due to COVID-19: How many of these athletes died and How many athletes became sick enough to have to be hospitalized?
As far as I am aware, at least among college and pro athletes (and 99.99999 percent of high School athletes), the answer to the first question is ZERO and the answer to the second might be “a couple” or “a handful” (out of a sample group of millions).
If a medical emergency has now become defined as one where no member of a specified group has died and hardly anyone in the same group has been hospitalized (and almost nobody develops even mild symptoms) we’ve all fallen into Alice’s Rabbit Hole.
Authorities WILL create mandates and protocols
My COVID football example illustrates a larger and more important point. Namely, it is officials, authorities and bureaucrats who frame the narrative that ends up controlling our lives. Invariably, these officials have acted in response to fear-producing story lines pushed by alleged or dubious experts.
Here’s how this works. For various reasons, private citizens or members of different organizations decide to create associations to govern their members. Once the leaders of these organizations have established their power base, they spring into action to justify their existence.
Fear—or any “crisis”—gives them the perfect excuse to exert their control.
Someone has to protect the people, and, by God, these people will do it. By now, most Americans don’t give a second thought to this process. If the authorities and experts say something must be done, then it must to be done. Just as there’s no crying allowed in baseball, there’s no questioning allowed when it comes to the protocols and mandates.
If the Big 10 Commissioner—after consulting with the presidents of the Big 10 schools and their medical experts—said football could not be played unless 300 pages of mandates and guidelines were strictly followed, then that’s the way things will be done.
We see the same reality, not just in sports, but in damn near everything.
If the government says we must have 10 percent ethanol in our gasoline to “protect the environment,” well, okay then. If the government says we can no longer use the light bulbs we used for seven decades, we shrug our shoulders and buy the more expensive ones we’re told we must use.
If a president, the media and all the think tanks say our military has to invade and occupy certain Third World countries to protect our national security and/or our freedom, most of us salute and say, “Fine, let’s do it.” (Or, fine, let those people who volunteered for the military do it).
As for those odd curmudgeons like myself—the contrarians who insist that none of these things actually HAD to happen—we vent and write essays at our own Substack sites (because our freelance submissions and letters-to-the-editor kept getting rejected).
In reality, it wasn’t COVID-19 that caused all those games to be cancelled. It was virtue-signaling, group-thinking busy bodies—the same people who came up with all our unnecessary protocols, and then enforce them with maniacal fervor.
I’ll probably be called a nutcase for saying this, but what the hell. The old normal, the one where our lives were not increasingly dominated by specious mandates and protocols that most Americans now accept with no questions asked, was a better and happier place.
Note: This was adapted from an essay published originally at UncoverDC.com.
An example of bureaucrats flouting their power - my children’s school still doesn’t allow students to use the water fountain. Due to this parents must buy and wash these bottles every day. With their book bags, lunch bags and water bottles, 6-year-olds are lugging more gear to school than the infantry carries into battle.
Hi Bill,
The one phrase that has defined the lockdown mentality from the get go is "An abundance of caution". This was and still is used by heads of large corporations, especially the media. Virtue signalling over ruled common sense.
Great newsletter BTW!