If you want to know just what your ruling elites think of you, consider the case of Rep. Harley Rouda (D-CA). Rouda was photographed frolicking on a private-access California beach after tweeting that “[k]eeping Orange County beaches open during a heat wave is reckless.” His campaign manager defended Rouda by stating that he and his family “were actively moving and adequately socially distancing on a residential beach.”
Yet Rouda condemned the notion that ordinary citizens were capable of doing the same on public strips of sand. “We’re urging people to get outside. If we’ve got some great weather, some sunshine and fresh air, what better place to enjoy it than the beaches if enjoyed responsibly? And I trust our citizens to in fact be responsible,” Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner states in the very article Rouda linked to in his tweet opposing beach openings. Harley Rouda believes he can be trusted to act like an adult and you plebs can’t.
Don’t Call It Hypocrisy
The entitled personages who make up our modern-day big-government nomenklatura obviously believe that rules are meant only for the masses, who must be carefully herded like animals for the greater good of society. After all, one doesn’t expect a rancher to be penned up with his cattle. And so as we are forced to bunker down in our sun-deprived rooms as summer approaches, Americans get the added bonus of witnessing utterly shameless displays of what would be labeled hypocrisy from on high if only those involved actually believed that the restrictions they impose on their fellow citizens also applied to them.
A couple of high-profile examples aptly capture the aristocratic aura of this dual-standards construct. Neil Ferguson is a high-profile British academic epidemiologist. His alarmist warnings on the potential lethal effect of the Coronavirus are credited with persuading the United Kingdom and the United States to enact extreme social curbs on citizens in the name of public health. While many others were painting similarly gloomy pictures, Ferguson’s words packed an added punch due to the superstar status he has attained in government and academic circles. “A lot of it is not what they say, but who says it,” Devi Sridhar, director of the global health governance program at Edinburgh University, told The New York Times in March of these Cassandras preaching doom. “Neil Ferguson has a huge amount of influence.”
And what was Dr. Ferguson saying? “Intensive, and socially disruptive interventions … most notably, large scale social distancing, will need to be in place for many months, perhaps until a vaccine becomes available,” he declared as Britain and the U.S. began seriously addressing the issue. “The U.K. has struggled in the past few weeks in thinking about how to handle this outbreak long term,” Ferguson said on March 16. “Based on our estimates and other teams’, there’s really no option but follow in China’s footsteps and suppress.”
Ferguson directly called for the U.K. to replicate a communist regime’s repression of its citizens, and not only did British decision-makers endorse this historic infringement on Western personal liberties, but the U.S. was inspired to follow suit as well. Yet Ferguson’s Great Health Leap Forward did not affect him personally. He met up with a married woman for trysts during the lockdown he crafted.
More Than Just a Personal Agenda?
Ferguson acknowledges that he allowed his paramour Antonia Staats to enter his home on at least two occasions. The fact that Ferguson had no regard for the strict social distancing he demanded, coupled with reports that Staats is a hardline leftist political activist, has now called his scientific calculations into question. Staats has been a staunch anti-Brexit crusader and helped lead an anti-Trump agitation campaign in 2016 for an organization funded by progressive globalist billionaire George Soros. One can’t help noticing that her lover’s lockdown, which they so flagrantly flouted together, has severely damaged England’s economy as it moves to cut away from the European Union and caused massive job loss in America as President Trump faces re-election.
“A bigger issue than Professor Ferguson’s private life is the accuracy of his model,” Conservative Member of Parliament David Davis tweeted out on May 5. “When applied to the Swedish policy it forecast 40,000 deaths by now, over 15 times the reality.” It turns out that oligarchy may have distinct social revolutionary benefits along with forbidden luxuries like private beach access on a sweltering day.
And then there are Barack and Michelle Obama. “Remember, we urge you to stay home except if you need essential health care, essential food or supplies or to go to your essential job,” former first lady Michelle implored Washington, D.C. residents in a robocall at the end of April. Only a few days after shut-in commoners began receiving their telephonic spam from Michelle, their former president Barack was photographed enjoying a round of golf at the prestigious Robert Trent Jones Country Club in suburban Virginia.
In the Obamas’ defense, the outing was indeed essential. Feeling above and beyond the societal muzzles they impose on others is an indispensable mother’s milk to nourish the egos of an arrogant ruling class that believes it is better than you.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
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