To: Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: State Of Non-Emergency<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your Highness,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your ongoing, and apparently endless, emergency declaration is, put mildly, draconian – especially if you’re in the private sector, especially an entrepreneur. You’ll notice that a sizable majority of people supporting the your most extreme quarantining provisions are public, non-profit or academic employees, students, or the retired. There’s a reason for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, we’re Americans. Most of our anscestors came here to escape tyranny – some petty, some very much not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for most of us in the private sector, “resisting” the worst excesses of your emergency measures is beyond our control or ability. Our businesses are shut down; trying to re-open leaves many of us open to getting ratted out to state licensing and permitting authorities on the government-sponsored snitch lines, which the “Karens” among our neighbors are all too happy to keep busy, thus making earning a living a risky venture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our jobs, our livelihoods, our social lives – especially those of us for whom “zoom calls” are no substitute for business or pleasure – are all on hold until events meet criteria that our Governor, in a display of abusiveness that would get him tossed in jail if he did it to his wife or kids, won’t tell us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do we do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
History is dotted with ways in which people, deprived of all other means of hitting back at their oppressor, hit ’em anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Norway was occupied during the Second World War, Norwegians – the ones who couldn’t escape to the UK or into the mountains to carry on the battle – would draw a number “7”, or flash seven fingers at fellow citizens. It referred to Norway’s king, H\u00e5kon the 7th. It was a small, almost meaningless gesture – but it gave the people the feeling that they were doing\u2026something, at least, that the occupier couldn’t control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, I suspect, with masks. Minnesotans, their jobs reducing hours or cutting pay or just plain gone, their businesses gasping for air, their social lives and recreation limited to whatever’s in their houses, only as safe from retaliation as their least stable, least passive-aggressive “Karen” or “Chad” of a neighbor, are resisting with the only tool they have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Work With Me, Here – And you know what? It didn’t have to be this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Been to stores that require masks? Many people gripe about it – but most people put ’em on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, I don’t personally care – I’ve already had Covid, and can neither catch nor spread the disease; I may as well wear a red rubber clown nose. But there IS a reason surgical staff wear them, too [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a hunch if Minnesota would have done it, given the right information and a choice, if the state had\u2026:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a) Asked people, nicely, to wash their hands, stay home when sick, and put on a mask when around crowds, and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
b) Foregone the whole “act like your scolding mother” and gone a lot lighter on the whole “emergency powers” thing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
c) Focused the state’s efforts on protecting the vulnerable\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026things might have worked out a lot better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Y’know – like they did in South Dakota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, that is all predicated on the notion that the state’s response was about mitigating the effects of Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[1] And no, people who get health problems from the minuscule amount of CO2 that gets trapped in their masks are about as common as people with actual Celiac disease (I’ll let our millennial readers shuffle uncomfortably and clear their throats).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To: Governor WalzFrom: Mitch Berg, Irascible PeasantRe: State Of Non-Emergency Your Highness, Your ongoing, and apparently endless, emergency declaration is, put mildly, draconian – especially if you’re in the private sector, especially an entrepreneur. You’ll notice that a sizable majority of people supporting the your most extreme quarantining provisions are public, non-profit or academic employees, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[453,416,2],"tags":[249,423],"class_list":["post-74620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ch-ch-changes-generational-politics","category-covid19","category-minnesota-politics","tag-open-letters","tag-the-endless-emergency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74621,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74620\/revisions\/74621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}