Sciascia: US Lockdowns Are Done, So if You Want To Stay Home, Nobody Is Stopping You
As the global coronavirus pandemic continues to taper off, Americans are slowly making a return to cinemas, sporting events and convention halls.
For some reason, however, the libertine left has decided this uncertain slope is the ground upon which it will make its first ever moral stand — and the movement’s members are losing their collective mind over any and all efforts to re-institute some semblance of normalcy in the United States.
The latest, and perhaps the most ridiculous, example of this almost vocational tantrum-throwing came on the virtual pages of video game blog Kotaku, where the overwhelmingly leftist pop culture punks in charge have apparently decided to campaign against the joy of their fellow nerds by advocating that Comikaze Entertainment not go through with Los Angeles Comic Con 2020.
An official statement released this week by LA Comic Con general manager Chris DeMoulin indicated the organization intends to go through with the convention this coming December, with a substantial emphasis on public health provisions.
The proposal was not a winner in the eyes of Kotaku senior writer Luke Plunkett, who wrote the decision off as impatient and immature in a profane opinion column entitled, “What The F—, LA Comic Con Is Going Ahead.”
“In December 2020, the organisers of the LA Comic Con want to open the doors of the Los Angeles Convention Center and allow thousands of people in for a nerd show,” Plunkett wrote. “That’s in less than three months! What the hell!
“Despite every other major (and minor show) across the planet deciding to simply take the year off and reconvene when there isn’t a risk of illness and death, LA Comic Con is bored of this whole thing and would like to get back to normal, regardless of whether things are actually normal or not,” Plunkett added.
Given DeMoulin’s own words on the subject, however, impulse and boredom hardly factored into the decision, if at all.
Instead, going forward with the convention seems to have been a decision pursued in the interest of giving the community something to look forward to — a particularly noble intention, given recent spikes in depression and suicidal thoughts correlated with long-running public health lockdowns.
“Over the past six months, we’ve been struggling with a very important question: ‘Should we even ATTEMPT to have L.A. Comic Con in 2020?'” DeMoulin wrote. “Since March, we’ve been living in some version of a ‘Lockdown/Safer at Home’ world, trying hard to stay safe, hoping and praying for the health and safety of ourselves, our family, friends, neighbors and all of our fellow human beings.
“We’re wearing masks, keeping socially distant, and remaining thankful for frontline workers, hospital personnel and everyone working hard to make a difference,” he added.
“And yet, we all yearn for just a little bit of normality, to reclaim some aspects of our lives pre-COVID.”
According to DeMoulin, that reclamation would only take place if the team behind LA Comic Con could secure unwavering approval from the LA County Health Department.
In the interest of making sure the convention could happen, DeMoulin said, event organizers would cut ticket sales by 50 percent, require masks and social distancing, separate specific parts of the convention into their own rooms and rent the entirety of the LA Convention Center, rather than half.
As is typical of the modern American leftist, Plunkett was unswayed by such rational provisions, suggesting in response that any calculation absent his own was foolish and somehow managing a strange, sideways swipe at President Donald Trump in the same breath.
“Chris, that’s not how this works! You can’t just make like the President of the United States and yearn all this away. Covid is still infecting millions of Americans and killing thousands,” Plunkett wrote, later adding, “For what it’s worth, the con is trying to sell this with a series of Covid-safe measures, like the fact they’ve rented the entire LA Convention Center space instead of the regular half, are selling half the number of tickets than usual (last year’s event drew 100,000 people), and will spread out stalls and activities.
“But this is an indoor con that is still aiming to attract 50,000 people, and no amount of precautions can make that sound like a safe idea, let alone a good one,” he concluded.
A glance at official data, however, would indicate that the virus isn’t “infecting millions of Americans and killing thousands” quite as fast as folks like Plunkett seem to believe.
In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that cases and death rates alike are falling — and stepping outside your front door isn’t exactly a death sentence these days (not that any available evidence indicates it ever was).
And given those facts, the obvious question comes into view: Where is the American left’s supposed reverence for “choice” in the COVID-19 debate?
I, for one, am old enough to remember when the common leftist response to just about every conservative concern or warning regarding potential dangers at play in particular policy discussions was, “Don’t like it? Don’t do it?”
“Don’t support gay marriage?” they would ask. “Don’t enter into one.”
“Don’t support abortion?” they would ask. “Don’t get one.”
Yet, somehow, that deeply permissive attitude manages to fall to the wayside when it comes to discussions in which conservative and independent America would like a bit of latitude.
Those discussions — spinning up around issues like firearms, religious liberty and economic reopening — always seem to rise to a level of importance and cultural impact at which individual “choice” is no longer the highest value in the left’s eyes, having been usurped by the “greater good.”
Well, it is about time conservatives and independents began invoking the “greater good” as well — the greater good of economic stability, wider American freedom and individual sanity, to be specific.
Put more bluntly, Americans are just about fed up with locking down indefinitely as the left moves the goal posts on public health.
We’re getting back to business and, heck, even leisure — for our own good and the good of our families.
Don’t like it? Stay home and stick a sock in it.
You have that right, and the rest of America would be happy to leave you be.
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