Lockdown Glee

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It’s telling how many liberals seem gleeful about this sort of thing. Why? is the question I’ve been asking myself lately. Of course, there are probably a variety of answers. There usually are.

Part of I think is understandable: this pandemic is dealing a blow of sorts to parts of capitalism and that is something they’ve been unable to achieve in 40 years of attempts. That it’s only benefitting monopolies and oligopolies and such seems lost on these types altogether.

And part of it is that a lot of these people crowing about how very hard we’ll have to lock down is that they are trust-funders insulated from any real economic consequences.

Another factor is that, though they’ve abandoned most conventional religion, that sort of thinking has not abandoned them. They are convinced somewhere deep in their nominally-secular souls that through suffering comes redemption, and what better suffering than economic collapse and ruin? Of course it’s not so sharply articulated in their minds, but that makes it more insidious rather than less.

In my opinion, of course, we shouldn’t close anything again. The time for lockdown is done. We tried it and it did not work, or did not work well enough. The reasons are now irrelevant.

Allowing lockdown to become a lefty religious movement, backed by oligopoly, is worse even than the alternative.