Day 257: Saturday ramble

It’s Day 257 of The First Ohio Shutdown, Day 17 of Ten O’Clock Buckeye Bedtime and Day 193 of The Pacific Northwest’s Anti-Tourism Campaign.

Deb and I are doin’ ok this weekend, so far.

Our work in and around the bus continues apace. Today Deb directed her effort toward the living quarters — wiping down horizontal and vertical surfaces, washing curtains and basically getting the interior clean and as empty as can be. My job this Saturday was to collect all of the left-behind spare parts, accessories and manuals, bring them into my workshop, go through everything and decide what stays and what goes.

So we’re making progress. Lots of little stuff.

Tomorrow I’ll start the engine and generator and run them up to temp. I believe I’ll do that every couple of weeks this winter.

Next steps will be changing the locks and adding security, putting the interior electronics in order, and cleaning the carpet and upholstery. And yeah, I need to address that issue with the brake and signal lights.

In a previous professional life I had the good fortune to work briefly with Bill Bennett, former secretary of education and “drug czar.” We sat together at dinner before a large public event one evening and, through our own conversation and watching him interact with others, I found him to be one of the smartest and most intellectually honest people I’ve ever been around.

It’s beyond dispute that Bennett is part of the conservative establishment. He may not get a lot of love from the pro-Trump crowd, probably because he’s not sufficiently rash or reactionary, but to me his measured, traditional Patriotism is of considerable value.

During a Fox & Friends interview this morning, to my surprise, he said this:

“This election was fixed.”

So a guy who’s not given to fits of conspiracy smells a rat. While acknowledging that it may be difficult (if not impossible) to overturn the result in the courts, Bennett cited (correctly) mounting circumstantial evidence that the 2020 presidential election was, by any reasonable definition, rigged by Democrat operatives against Trump.

You may consider that to be my perspective as well. I fully support rigorous investigation of any and all irregularities surrounding this election — whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes.

Ohio’s governor has been switching it up lately. Apparently he decided that limiting his appearances to Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2pm wasn’t enough to keep his public profile where he wants it. Yesterday, on a Friday, he held a presser — ostensibly to talk about the magic vaccine.

He couldn’t leave the podium, however, without issuing one of his trademark threats:

“We’re in a very tenuous, dangerous situation and what I think everyone should be able to agree on is that we cannot let our hospitals get to the point where healthcare is dramatically threatened. The curfew, the additional mask-wearing, the inspection of retail, we think these things have helped, but they have not helped enough. We’re going to have to do more. We don’t have any choice.”

This from the governor whose repeated mistakes created whatever pressure there is on the healthcare system, who believed that he and his Ministry of Health could discourage a virus as if it was some misbehaving toddler.

And he’s wrong, of course, about not having a choice — regardless of any decrees or mandates he throws down, the People, each of us and all of us, always have a choice.

There’s a ton of opposition to government WuFlu mandates, for sure, and I’ve noticed a great number of my friends aren’t inclined to get in line for the vaccine when it comes out in the next week or two. And that’s all good.

What’s not good, as I see it, is our compulsion to come up with explanations and defenses for making choices that don’t line up with the popular narrative.

Consider the case typically made by a business owner these days: We’ve reduced capacity. We’ve put up plexiglass and we make everyone wear a mask. We put Xs and arrows all over the floors, we provide hand sanitizer and we deep-clean everything a dozen times a day. We even check the temp of everyone who walks through the door. We know we can operate “safely.” Why can’t we reopen?

The problem with that is it plays right into the State’s “pandemic theater” scheme — and since that’s a lie, based on control and not science, it has virtually no “public health” benefit. So making an argument to the government based on demonstrated compliance with government mandates only strengthens the government’s case for issuing future orders.

The State just loves it when we do that.

Individuals fall into the same trap when it comes to masks. We’re seeing it with the imminent release of a WuFlu vaccine, too.

Have you noticed that people who can’t wait to be first in line for a shot don’t feel the need to cite a true scientific basis for vaccination, but they demand that people who decline to be vaccinated provide a long list of irrefutable reasons for their choice?

Think about that.

If you choose to get the vaccine, you don’t have to justify it. If you choose not to get the vaccine, you’re under pressure to explain it to the rest of this reflexively compliant society.

Right there’s your proof that collectivism is winning. When a narrative has this much power, trumping both facts and freedom, you realize that Orwell was damned prescient.

Our response to the madness is pretty simple: We’re Americans, dammit. We don’t have to justify shit.

Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay free.

#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #OhioAgainstDeWine

(Header image from an escape to Muskingum County in August.)