I know!  Central American nations have scads of people eager and dying (literally) to come to the United States, and we have a bunch of basketball players and other ingrates who think that the republic is filled with privileged white racists who all conspire to oppress everyone else.  Let’s swap.  We’ll be better off, but I’m not so sure about Honduras and Guatemala.  The spoiled brats won’t have to worry about us evil white people hurting their feelings anymore, just murderous drug gangs, tin-pot dictators, and hopeless poverty.  That’s a fair trade, right?

While we’re at it, perhaps the Black Lives Matter radicals would like to escape the monstrous conditions here by moving to, say, Nigeria.  Who wouldn’t prefer Islamist Boko Haram murderers, rapists and kidnappers to brain-dead Proud Boyz?  If Nigeria doesn’t appeal, perhaps the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army?  Joseph Kony is just their sort of man.

And the anti-capitalist, anti-fascist Antifa would certainly be happier in a country where anticapitalism and antifascism are de rigueur – Cuba, perhaps, or North Korea.  They’ll have to be careful with the protests, though.  A mostly peaceful riot will get you a bullet in the head rather than immediate release from custody by a sympathetic judge. 

None of which is to argue that the good ole U.S. of A. is a perfect country that doesn’t have a problem in the world.  We conservatives are more than happy to point out the flaws in that thinking; as a matter of fact, we’re convinced that the crooked timber of humanity makes perfection in a nation an impossible, utopian dream/nightmare.  Instead, it’s just to point out that there are countries with problems, and then there are countries with problems.  Be careful what you wish for, and aware of how much you have to lose.

_________________________________________________

Tens of millions of people are convinced that the last election was stolen by the Democrats.  A few dozen brain-dead, armed-to-the-teeth white supremacists playing at “militia” is a laughable irritation of no concern to a great nation (although it is a serious law-enforcement problem), but tens of millions who believe that democracy has been subverted is something else again.  Tens of millions is not an insane irritation, it’s a perfectly-sane political movement, which at the lunatic margins will contain thousands willing to do what it takes to Stop the Steal, and millions more wishing they had the guts.

They may not realize it, but the Democrats have set themselves a trap.  Even people (like me) who believe that Biden was legitimately elected (unfortunately) are very worried about the legitimacy of our election systems.  “Innovations” hurriedly put in place to deal with the Covid 19 pandemic only increase the potential for massive fraud – and that’s now the Democrats’ problem.  They are going to have to quickly move to improve election security and transparency or alienate millions of center-of-the-road voters who are less worried about who gets elected than that the election be fair, honest, and representative.  For those who are right of center, the risk is that millions will be radicalized and turn against the American electoral system itself.

Once we lose faith in democracy, losing faith in our democratic republic won’t be far behind.

__________________________________________________

The end of the Covid 19 plague is in sight.  It’s going to be interesting to see what lessons are learned.  In a sane world, I think those would include:

• Short term lockdowns have to be almost hermetic to be effective, and that’s almost impossible in a free nation.
• Extended lockdowns are not worth the economic, educational, or mental health costs.  Nor is there any evidence that they are very effective at stopping the spread of a highly-infectious disease.
• Face masks are only marginally effective; not totally useless – they don’t do any harm – but not very useful, either.
• Dying with Covid 19 is not the same thing as dying of Covid 19.  The number of deaths caused by Covid 19 was exaggerated; many if not most of the people who died were killed by a combination of problems including any number of other diseases, and the frailty of old age.  Covid 19 was not the primary cause, but did push a great many vulnerable people over the edge.
• In the end, the only thing that stopped the pandemic was herd immunity, achieved by catching the disease or vaccination.  Nothing else did much good.
• The great and good Adam Smith was right.  To paraphrase, the person who thinks himself capable of exercising great power wisely is the last person to whom it should be entrusted.
• On the other hand, most people have the good sense – or at least a sufficiently-healthy fear of death – to take care of themselves without being hectored by overweening do-gooder nannies.
• Politicizing a disease is obscene.

This is not a sane world, so we can expect the wrong lessons to be learned.

Kenneth D. Gough © 2021