It’s not all the time, but every so often Joe Biden becomes lucid enough to show us he’s more than just a comic buffoon. When he does, the results are always more dangerous than that.
Of course, having a comic buffoon as president of the United States is dangerous enough. America has some real problems, which require tough, enlightened, and principled leadership. The current occupant of the White House is certainly capable of acting as a carnival barker, though when Donald Trump lets loose controversial tweets and statements in press conferences they’re usually fired off as a means of driving the conversation or distracting the media from other things he’s doing.
In Hawaii, where the mask mandate was more or less exactly what Biden would impose on us from now until after the election, COVID-19 case counts have exploded.
That’s something much different from Biden, whose gaffes, gropings, and inappropriate behavior are much more reflective of a senile, dirty old man than a political tactician. Unless you think, for example, that making openly racist statements is a brilliant move aimed at dog-whistling the poor white trash into pulling the lever for the Democrats while black voters will continue to stick with the program.
You have to wade through a lot of nonsense and stupidity with Biden, which shouldn’t be a surprise given that he had to repeat the third grade, for crying out loud.
But when you’ve done that, you end up with something you can really oppose.
Take, for example, Biden’s demand last week that everybody in America be forced to wear a mask at all times when outside our homes. While we’re jogging, while we’re watering the plants, while driving or riding a bicycle alone.
“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum,” he said. “Every governor should mandate mandatory mask-wearing. The estimates by the experts are it will save over 40,000 lives.… It’s not about your rights; it’s about your responsibilities.”
Biden’s self-identification as a Mask Nazi isn’t new; it dates back from June when he said that if he was president he would institute a national comprehensive mask mandate.
Trump was correct in pushing back against this lousy idea and affront to civil rights.
“He does not identify what authority the president has to issue such a mandate, or why we would be stepping on governors throughout our country,” he said, adding, “If the president has the unilateral power to order every single citizen to cover their face in nearly all instances, what other powers does he have?”
That’s certainly true. What it tells us is that whoever the people pulling Biden’s strings are have absolutely zero concept of there being limits to presidential power over average Americans.
If you want to wear a mask and you think it’ll save you or somebody else from the Chinese virus, this column isn’t going to try to persuade you otherwise. Do what you want to do.
But for the edification of Joe Biden and whatever gaggle of socialist tyrants-to-be who control him, so they’ll know, not only is a nationwide mask mandate a hideous unconstitutional nanny-state overreach but it also doesn’t work.
Mask mandates don’t work, so you’ll know.
They didn’t work to stop the spread in California, and they didn’t work to stop the spread in Louisiana. In both states viral spread increased, rather than decreased, after the mask mandates went into force. And in both states the excuse for the failure of the mask mandate to stop the spread was to blame ordinary people for not complying enough.
As though noncompliance isn’t a factor in the efficacy of public policy. Making it illegal to murder people shockingly doesn’t stop people from murdering each other. Making possession of marijuana illegal doesn’t stop people from keeping weed around. And attempting to force people to wear masks everywhere similarly won’t work.
Even then, if masks actually worked what you would see is a slowdown in the spread nobody would think was sufficient. You wouldn’t see it explode.
And in Hawaii, where the mask mandate was more or less exactly what Biden would impose on us from now until after the election, COVID-19 case counts have exploded.
Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review went through the numbers on Friday. If his research doesn’t completely debunk the utility of mask mandates for you, you simply can’t be persuaded with facts:
Hawaii might possibly have the strictest lockdown and mask mandates in the country. It is essentially as strict as the Philippines, though without the threat of being shot by police. However, the state has jailed people for violating lockdown orders (while releasing 38% of all its real criminals in jail!). Tourism has been nonexistent, and all remaining visitors were told to quarantine. There has been a mandate in place requiring mask-wearing indoors since April and now even outdoors for the past month — even while jogging!
The result? Cases are surging more than ever — just like in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Israel, Australia, and every southern latitude area with a strict mask mandate and lockdown.
There are 55 percent more cases in Hawaii now than there were in April before the mask mandate went into effect:
Like most other countries that engaged in heavy-handed police state tactics, Hawaiians have nothing to show for their lockdown but a crushed economy and lives lost. Sure, they still have a low death rate, but that has nothing to do with stopping the spread with mandates. The spread was not stopped. The low death rate is likely driven by the same theory behind the low death rates in all the Pacific Rim countries — they have a high rate of cross-immunity from persistent coronavirus colds.
The same dynamic is unfolding in New Zealand. The country has been in a perpetual state of lockdown since March at an unfathomably painful cost. Now they have discovered a new cluster of community spread. Where did it come from? The virus does what the virus does. The only question is whether you will destroy your country while it does.
Of course, it isn’t really all that difficult to know what’s driving Biden’s handlers to demand the mask mandate. They want to make people as miserable and afraid as possible between now and the election, and they know making ordinary folks subject to harassment from police and various hysterical Karens and others every time they leave the house is one way to do that. And they’ve seen polls indicating that the more restrictive and draconian the COVID policy is, the more approval it gets from the people who answer polls in 2020.
Of course, those with clear heads and a healthy appreciation for civil liberties, and who think comic buffoons controlled by shadowy far-left Democrat handlers are a lot more dangerous than a virus with a survival rate of more than 99.5 percent, will continue to be horrified by Joe Biden. But the masterminds behind his campaign are betting we’re outnumbered, and they’ll have him play to the hysterical mob from now until it’s over.
