That is, they have removed the ability of many Americans to work for a living, and hooked them on the "free" money of the COVID handouts.
It's a process:
- Whip up fear of contagion. Initiate the first Lockdowns, just to slow the growth.
- Continue it, as the alleged numbers rise. Supply the media with pictures, interviews with health care workers, and videos of the pandemic. Make sure that they, and the people in authority that are on camera, speak with one voice - and that voice better be frightened of the coming catastrophe, but reassuring about the public's chances of continued survival, as long as they scrupulously follow every OCD recommendation.
- Ridicule the opposition. Demonize them. Threaten any dissenters with financial ruin and even jail time.
- Keep the carrot extended - FREE money if ONLY you will stay home.
- "Luckily", and Completely Coincidentally, Zoom and other teleconference services become widely available - for FREE!!!! I'll keep to myself my darker suspicions about the oversight of Big Brother (even as I do take advantage of it for business and family contacts).
- The lackluster performance of Biden/Harris is negated by the scripted appearances and previously recorded interviews and speeches. The compliant media is given opportunities to be a part of the media circus that surrounds the campaign, as long as they never mention the Potemkin Foundations of the Joe/Hoe campaign.
- What you read/view becomes a part of you. The gloom and doom televised COVID updates, both semi-reassuring (you PROBABLY won't die, as long as you stay home), and horrifying (the numbers, the numbers!!!). Has anyone else noticed that, as one year bled into the next, there was never a scorecard re-set, as is customary with seasonal infections? Instead, all reporting is cumulative.
- The talk shows threw themselves into this, full time, featuring:
- COVID coping strategies
- Online buying - LOTS of buying!!!
- Wine
- More Wine
- Crafts for the homebound
- Ways for the women of the house to pamper themselves (the men were generally working)
- Mask patterns
- Women who labored to cover the world in masks
- Women who made money making masks (not as sainted as the above)
- Women who sacrificed - nurses, mothers, caring for aging parents, teachers - ALL who are Truly Suffering, unlike the trucker who does the same without making a line dance of it all
- Younger patients with COVID - all with co-morbidities, most often Major Obesity
- The occasional death of an under-60 - again, all with co-morbidities. Almost every one not only overweight, but FAT (I am FAT. I can call it what it is)
- The rise of the Screaming Karens!!!!! People tisk-tisk at that, and suggest that GENTLE reminders - accompanied with stern, VERY disapproving looks - are more appropriate
What's next?
Well, we know what's next. Withdrawal of the financial subsidies, coupled with regulations still limiting restaurants and bars - two of the businesses most likely to have jobs for the less-educated, making unemployment in the underclasses a perma-problem.
Followed by the onset of Spring/Summer riot season. Helpfully designed to destroy whatever remains of Free Enterprise in the cities. As well as to "teach" the vulnerable young how to make themselves unemployable.
