Dakota Beacon

I’ve just read what I consider an important essay on human behavior.  You have probably noticed the sheep-like acquiescence of otherwise normal human beings shuffling around wearing paper masks.  These people wear them everywhere - out walking their dogs, at the outdoor vegetable markets, driving their cars, out in their own gardens.  They have their little children in them as well.  And if they encounter you and you are not wearing a mask they glare at you or perhaps avert their eyes as if to show their disgust.  This behavior goes beyond “going along to get along” or placating some mall cop set up in a store doorway to intercept violators of mask “requirements”.  Some will even take it upon themselves to lecture us.  One acquaintance posted a facebook message that people who don’t wear masks are “malignant narcissists”.  Well, I have known a few malignant narcissists in my time, unfortunately, but just not wearing a mask would have been a big step up for them.  

What brings us to this?  I have wondered how on earth some governor could turn a whole culture inside out - exert so much influence on a shopkeeper, for example, that after a summer of lockdown and lack of business he can persuade them to throw customers out with threats and verbal insults, attempting (and in some cases succeeding) in humiliating them in front of others and even eliciting a violent reaction.  One would think that when commerce is at a near standstill one could go into a shop without being verbally or perhaps physically assaulted for it.  It goes against nature, right?  Or does it?  This virus epidemic (which has largely burned itself out by now) has shone light on a peculiar feature of human nature - the willingness of many and the desire of some to take orders - even orders that go against what they know intellectually and objectively.  So someone who is successful in business today forfeits his bottom line and shuts his doors not because reason dictates this, or facts make it clear, but rather because an “expert” told him he must.  For everyone’s good.  For society’s good.  Otherwise he is a “malignant narcissist” I suppose.   I just watched a video in which a man sitting outdoors eating a burrito was assaulted by a woman who threw hot coffee on him for being there without a mask.  A complete stranger walks up, scolds a man (who is eating a burrito) for not wearing a mask and ends up throwing her hot coffee on him.  When have we ever heard of this kind of thing?  

The lockdowns themselves seem to fly in the face of reason.  Whereas we might see our way clear to take off a couple of weeks to enable health care providers to catch up to a new virus, it seems inconceivable that we would lie down for this all spring, summer and into fall.  If you asked the most militant of the door guards about this a year ago you would have been answered with a horse laugh or perhaps stunned silence.  Most of us grew up on the established principle that “following orders” was not good enough for a Nazi screw.  We were taught this.  But one contagious virus later, everything is on the table.  The Bill of Rights - hell, we can’t assemble now - even in churches in many places.  Social media is the new “classifieds” and “message board” of our time, yet if someone posts something encouraging about research or treatments or cures for the disease which has destroyed the entire world’s economies, it is taken down or at best given some sort of code that it is “unreliable” information.  Those who promote such research or report on successes are labeled “fakes” or worse.  

We are not acting rationally.  We have abandoned our own senses and our own logic and ability to evaluate.  We have turned over our thinking to others, to “experts”.  It overrides everything in our lives right now.  Our relationships with friends are being destroyed, Our employment, tenuous at best, is being put to the test daily.  Our families are being torn apart by the response to this virus. Our own personalities and characters are being destroyed as we are roped into this group-think.  As recently as last Christmas, did you ever think we would have come to this in a few months’ time?  Not only that our governments would try to panic us into relinquishing our freedom to them, but that we would be pressuring each other to act quickly to comply?  

Ayn Rand has argued that the “I” part of the deal is key.  Each person has not only a right but a duty to consider how an action affects himself and his own greater (as opposed to specific) benefit.  We are seeing now what happens when we subvert this normal formula and turn it upside down, where the individual’s concerns and interests are subordinated to and ignored  for “the common good”.  It becomes a world that is good for no one.  John Waters, in today’s Front Page, has given this a lot of thought.  He discusses the tyranny of the “experts” and its cost.   He explores the mindset of those who implement these toxic policies and play their part in coercing the rest of us.   His article is well worth reading - don’t rush through it.  Please share it.  

Last weekend a musician friend, playing at an event - in a mask - said, as he took it off following his performance, that he knew it was useless but he was wearing it so as “not to piss off” certain people. (I suppose any musician who is working is lucky these days - on the weekend Grand Forks sponsored a food truck festival.  We suggested they add live music and they said they couldn't this year because of "COVID 19".  It is the excuse for everything now.  It makes no sense to invite hundreds of people to a food truck fair and then, as my son observed, say that three of them playing musical instruments would be a COVID threat.  He got a blank stare in return.)   When you do things you know are stupid just to make certain people happy, when you act for no better reason than that, you have lost a very important element of personhood.  Let me know what you think of Waters’ view.  Here is the link.

If we care anything about the country we grew up in, if we care anything about what is happening to our families and friendships, if we care about our liberty, we need to confront this now.

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