Did you hear the news? Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer broke the virus rules!
No, it’s not about that time her husband tried to use her position to get their boat in the water earlier over Memorial Day. Or that time Whitmer flew to Florida right before warning the public that traveling to Florida was dangerous because of all the virus variants it could spread. Or that time Whitmer ignored all her own social distancing decrees to join the ‘racial reckoning’ over George Floyd.
Nope, this time Whitmer is in trouble because she met a dozen friends for dinner at a bar in East Lansing. That violated Whitmer’s order to cap dinner groups at a maximum of six people, and her other order that tables be spaced out.
Whitmer has trotted out to do the usual fake penance.
‘Because we were all vaccinated, we didn’t stop to think about it,’ she said. ‘In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I am human. I made a mistake and I apologize.’ Translation: ‘Ugh, you got me, can I take the L and move on, perchance?’
Okay, Cockburn has to ask: isn’t everybody bored with these by now? We’re 14 months into coronavirus by now, so we know a few things. We know that none of these social distancing rules really matter that much. Florida and Texas were more lax than Michigan and it didn’t matter; Michigan’s greater neuroticism per capita didn’t save it from having more deaths per capita as well.
And we definitely know that powerful people don’t give a hoot about actually following these rules. All the way back in April 2020 Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot was defending her special haircut privileges on the grounds she was the ‘public face’ of the city. Denver’s mayor flew to Mississippi for Thanksgiving after telling the hoi polloi to stay home. California governor Gavin Newsom dined lavishly at the French Laundry. When caught, he insisted the dinner was outside and therefore acceptable. When photos came out revealing otherwise, he…well, he didn’t have to do anything, because California is a one-party state and come on, what are they gonna do, recall him?
Of course, the biggest reveal that coronavirus restrictions were phony was last summer’s hiatus on restrictions for the sake of ‘racial justice’. The powers that be may want Cockburn to forget when a bunch of epidemiologists declared that ‘opposition to racism [is] vital to the public health’ and overrides infectious disease concerns, but his memory is remarkably good when paired with Bing.
By now, we all know what the remaining coronavirus restrictions are about. They certainly aren’t based on sound public health assessments, or preventing a crush of cases (Cases! Oh my God, cases! Have you seen the new cases?!?! Cases!!!) from swamping hospitals. They’re just a political requirement. They placate the most neurotic, most hypochondriac, most white members of the Democratic coalition. Some of them are still masking up every day, even outdoors, even after getting a vaccine. Some of them probably haven’t been outside in a year and are still sterilizing their mail, yet still feel very strongly that maximum effort is needed to stop the virus, and if you disagree, then just wait two weeks for the 27th time.
On the flipside, of course, restrictions are needed to show what leaders are not. If Whitmer gets rid of all restrictions and returns life to normal, she might as well just be Ron DeSantis, except the leader of a less prosperous, shrinking state, which still managed to have more coronavirus deaths.
So in short, coronavirus restrictions exist so that shrill harpies on the left won’t scream at Whitmer on Twitter — and so nobody will think she’s ‘giving in’ to the bad Trump people’s denial of the virus. Why not leave her to suffer in peace?
Cockburn suggests a compromise: we’ll stop caring when Democratic politicians break social distancing rules, but we’ll also stop caring about following them ourselves.
