From Rugged Individualism to Rancid Individuality

There is an “analysis” piece at CNN from John Harwood, the progressive commentator who, like Jeffrey Toobin, CNN gives some veneer of objectivity to. It is actually kind of amazing. In it, Harwood laments that Biden is a victim of circumstance unable to control anything because everything is out of his control.

There's not much he can do to curb inflation.

There's not much he can do to stop migrants from reaching America's southern border. Or to reduce crime, or to make vaccine resisters get shots that would hasten the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

There's not much he can do to compel cooperation from defectors within his thin Democratic congressional majorities. There is nothing at all he can do to compel it from Republican adversaries who would rather aggravate than alleviate his burdens.

In other words, there's not much Biden can do about the heaviest weights depressing his political standing, which has remained stuck in the avalanche-warning zone for months. So his party faces the likelihood of a substantial November election defeat that hands the House and perhaps the Senate to the GOP.

Never mind that inflation is chiefly driven by energy prices. Biden could immediately bring down the price of a barrel of oil by announcing massive drilling expansions. Yes, he technically just opened up more federal land for drilling, but the devil is in the detail — he is going to up the costs of doing so while keeping regulatory hurdles in place that make it cost-prohibitive.

Regardless, just consider the mask mandate.

Joe Biden actually could have scrapped the mask mandate. The mandate serves no purpose anymore. Masks are not stopping the variants. The vaccines are reducing the variants’ impact. He could have scrapped the mandate, but now a Trump-appointed judge has ended the mandate.

He gets no credit. At least, if there is a resurgence, he can blame a judge.

Now, however, progressives are in a full meltdown about you and me not wearing masks on airplanes. We are living in an unending cycle of fear. Progressives expect you to wear an N95 mask in perpetuity after two years of no one ever mandating specifically N95 masks.

In 2009, the swine flu epidemic swept the globe. Several hundred thousand people died. Hospitals in the United States were overwhelmed. But many people had enough immunity from the regular flu that masks were not needed. We did not up end our lives. No one wore masks on planes.

In 2020, COVID hit and no one had natural immunity. Many more people died over several years. But multiple vaccines were developed. People developed natural immunity. And now COVID is far less impactful than it was just a year ago.

Immunocompromised people who are fully vaccinated and boosted will overwhelmingly survive COVID. My wife, who has lung cancer, got COVID a few weeks back despite being a cautious person and her COVID symptoms were far less severe than her reaction to the second dose of the vaccine. She was out of bed sooner from COVID than the vaccine. For comparison, a few years ago, she go the flu despite getting the flu vaccine and we had multiple trips to the ER and one ambulance trip.

The vaccine really works. The messaging that we cannot go back to a pre-COVID normal, internalized by a lot of progressives, always undermined the uptake of the vaccine. It really works and we should have been out of masks and back to offices far sooner.

I am not in the camp that thinks the government has perpetuated the pandemic to control us. I think the government internalized COVID-Zero and has spent two years trying to chart a path there. In giving up, the government fell back on security theater as it always does. The TSA screenings at the airport make you feel safe far more than they actually make you safe. Masks make some feel safe far more than they keep people safe.

Now masks are gone and progressives are howling mad about it, largely for the same reason they are mad when you “misgender” someone.