5 Comments
Aug 24, 2021Liked by David Shane

It feels like the country is refusing to recognize that rising costs (driven by a variety of different material and labor shortages caused by policy errors) are making it harder to allocate social goods in a uniform way. This has made it completely impossible to provide "universal" goods (health care, education, housing, etc), which is why we're pivoting to "notionally universal but only for the virtuous portion of the population that deserves it" alternatives. It's a way to try to salvage the original utopian goals of progressive thought -- "OK, I guess we really can't afford to do this for everyone, so I guess we need some rationale for why those being excluded don't deserve the same good things we do." No one will ever say that out loud, of course.

Expand full comment
Aug 24, 2021Liked by David Shane

The title of your post makes me think of a quote that Dennis Prager used (not attributed) on his show, "Those who are kind to the cruel will eventually be cruel to the kind."

The lefty/Mommy party half of the US identifies with collectivism, and so what's the cracking of a few eggs to make a virus-free omelet?

"She wipes her mouth and says I paid my vows today." Except now, it is a 200 foot tall Karen saying to the country, "I sanitized my hands, come into my clean room for mask-free love-making."

Expand full comment
Aug 24, 2021Liked by David Shane

There's a fairly transparently Bolshevik quality to elements of the lockdown nightmare. I don't encounter it in my own interactions with people, but it's easy to find, especially on Twitter. Demonization of a social class, obsession with ideological purity that's paired with open hypocrisy and unpunished violation of that purity by the authorities: those are two aspects.

Expand full comment

Let's say this is the beginning of a new trend, that is, cruelty against Christians, or patriots for the US military, or non-vaxxers for the Administrative State, is seen as akin to actions of white blood cells against a threat, and is therefore a virtue.

It is evidence of a willingness to fight. Do you see an equal or greater willingness of the Church to respond? It's my assertion that because the flabbiness of the Christian mind (not intellectualism, I go to a church of book readers) we have fallen into a belief that fighting is unnecessary and unChristian. It's not needed because 1. Freedom isn't worth fighting for because freedom isn't in the bible except for freedom of punishment for sins, and 2. If we are godly enough, victory will be easy and God will fight for us.

Is anyone asking if this mindset is a display of ungratefulness for the folks who sacrificed so much so that we could be paralyzed quibbling whether a $3.5 trillion or $1.9 trillion budget is more compassionate and Christian-compatible?

Expand full comment

You are brilliant! Thank you so much!

Expand full comment