Woe to the little man who dares to defy Lord Andrew Goombah and his yapping lapdog in Gracie Mansion—those men who imperiously abuse the powers of their offices like thug mafioso.
Their shameless siege on small businesses—barbershops, movie theaters, universities, and especially bars and restaurants—continues unabated, without the slightest signs of clemency or rudimentary awareness for the damage they have wrought on their city and state.
Meanwhile children begin the new school year cloistering like frightened guinea pigs behind clinically sanitized glass panes, obeying the commands of the czar’s legion of dutiful school teachers who obsequiously follow the edicts of the state. They remind a little one that should his nose slip through his mask it would be tantamount to Armageddon.
Governor Andrew Cuomo signals a possible reprieve for the month of September. “Little Restaurant Owner,” sayeth he, “You have been good during my reign. I shall grant thee a pardon: you may expand your total occupancy to 25 percent capacity.” He spits out these words with that bulbous smirk, hinting that one slight or inadvertent misdemeanor will delay the openings for an indefinite period of time, perhaps forever.
“Don’t forget,” His Majesty snarls, “how wonderful a job I did in leading the charge against COVID-19. New York far exceeded every other state in the country. We made mincemeat out of that bloviated Orangeman in the White House!”
Dare anyone suggest that Cuomo’s performance in fact was the exact opposite of what he proclaims; that New York needlessly suffered because of Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s incompetence; that but for Cuomo’s early decision to effectively hold thousands of New Yorkers hostage in nursing homes and hospitals, tolling the death knell for the septuagenarian-plus population, America’s total deaths from the Great Pandemic might have been half of what they are, and that person is a pariah.
Blind Capitulation
Instead, Cuomo expects New Yorkers to bend over backwards for him, kissing his ring while sabotaging their own livelihoods for the Glorious Cause. He expects blind capitulation to the most criminal and suicidal policy ever enacted by a single governor in the country’s history.
To a degree, New Yorkers are receiving their just deserts for voting in these two sociopaths. Those who believe in second chances, however, even if these people made the mistake of voting for one or both men, will recognize that their penance has far exceeded any sin committed.
Moreover, the reality is that the greatest victims of these lockdowns do not comprise Cuomo’s natural constituency; they are the middle-class business owners who grimace at the sight or sound of the names “Cuomo” or “de Blasio.”
Any New Yorker with an iota of common sense would notice the barefaced politicking afoot in the Empire State. Unfortunately, politics today is mostly optics. And the Democratic Party is happy to see the look of frightened citizens remaining segregated, confused, and ignorant.
Our dynamic governor-mayor duo fetishizes the humiliating sight of people’s faces festooned in a useless mask wrapped tighter than a baby’s diaper so as to further dehumanize them, perpetuating a culture of hopelessness, and promoting the idea that they must depend upon the likes of them to alleviate their suffering.
That is the clear agenda at work. But average people, for the most part, cannot identify these political trends. They don’t have the time to contemplate the shadowy forces at work behind the scenes, in part because they are not accustomed to think that way. They are not natural cynics. They still believe that our governments are not utterly corrupt beyond repair, or at minimum, that the people in charge of them are not megalomaniacs.
The Ultimate Flex
Ordinary people prefer to go with the flow, prove their bona fides as dutiful citizens, and avoid the wrath of the state or its caporegime. The Chamber of Commerce or the Board of Public Health extend their tentacles into local business communities, pouncing upon people for the most trivial oversights. This is the ultimate flex of power by pathetic, power-hungry bugmen who salivate over the opportunity to plummet their state into fiscal oblivion, hoping thereby to permanently fortify their power.
Yet pointing these things out does little good for those who choose to take notice.
Even the most politically unaware, however, might have occasion to ask himself: what benefit could possibly be derived from shutting down the most economically prosperous city in the world over a virus that has not killed a single New Yorker in weeks? Our data crunchers no longer even care to update the latest death figures, which seems at odds with the unrelenting alarmism coming from America’s Scientific Industrial Complex.
The short-term political game is quite clear: Cuomo and de Blasio’s party hopes to oust Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Many voters, not being especially percipient, tend to see only a single snapshot of a much larger revolution. So they reason: the economy is bad, Trump is president, ergo he’s to blame.
But others may detect something more menacing at work. The term “social distancing,” as brilliantly explained by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, seemed almost tailor-made for this particular crisis. One’s first instinct would not be to ascribe the label “social” to an objectively antisocial activity. Physical distancing would be getting closer to the reality of the call to “stand six feet apart.” If the phrase lacks the charm of “social distancing,” that’s because it bluntly conveys the message without political correctness.
This is important to note because shrewd observers will recognize this hasn’t been a “normal” pandemic. It has proven ripe ground for all sorts of experimentation—be it social with the “George Floyd riots,” and increasingly economic with the nonsensical excuses for keeping businesses on lockdown. Meanwhile, Zoom has seamlessly zoomed into schools, businesses, law firms, and myriad other professions, and is widely characterized as the next frontier in the full-throated campaign towards technological nirvana.
The Worst Is Yet to Come
Even more portentously, the lockdowns may prefigure an even more dramatic transformation of the American economy: an opportunity to usher forth something akin to the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit system.
Under this future dystopian model, all economic decisions will be tied to social credit and managed by multinational corporations like Amazon. The drive to centralize healthcare is one example of this phenomenon. Where one is placed on the single-payer queue will be determined by the strength of his social credit, which will replicate the Chinese model, though it promises to be more “woke.” Those who tout the party line will be elevated on the intersectional totem pole. Trump voters, as Michael Anton notes in his new book, won’t be as lucky.
How will the deplorables be treated? Will they merely be relegated to the back of the queue, or is that too merciful an ask? If the end goal is absolute power, denying them a spot on the queue entirely would be the most reasonable, if sinister, way to go.
That same reasoning could translate to food distribution. If America’s future food suppliers are all managed by elite corporations—a reality that otherwise would seem completely unthinkable if not for Cuomo and company’s onslaught on independently owned restaurants and supermarkets—it seems perfectly reasonable, and even plausible, to imagine that social credit ultimately will be linked to the food supply. Those who do not get on board with the program may starve.
Too outlandish? Consider the fact that small businesses, especially restaurants, are more than capable of returning to 100 percent occupancy today. Yet the two mafia terrorists who rule over New York are committed to holding average people in a permanent hostage situation. Obviously, this is no longer a question of public health, if it ever was. It’s a naked power grab; an unconstitutional and defiant exercise of power to a degree that was inconceivable only a few short months ago.
It’s a question of fundamentally transforming New York, and the rest of the country with it, into a left-wing hellhole, in which mob-like interrogation, fear, and despotism rule the day.