Bad
People With
Wrong Thoughts
Causing Trouble
| Austin Dispatches |
No. 226 |
June 22, 2020 |
Fittingly, the Austin Symphony Orchestra
canceled this year's Independence Day concert and fireworks. Ostensibly, the
symphony did so because of continuing
coronavirus
concerns.
But since the local power elite
̶
indeed,
Austin's contemporary ethos ̶ is so
increasingly at odds with
the
Spirit of '76, the ASO might as well dispense with
the pretense.
Incidentally, the Austin Symphony and Austin Opera fired a trombonist for
expressing pro-Trump and anti-black protester sentiments on social media,
publicly denounced her, and erased evidence of her existence on their Web sites.
Instead,
varieties of statists in a three-way fight for control of Austin provide the
fireworks.
As of this issue, the proletarians (radical protesters) and managerialists (the
power elite) have the enforcers (the police) in pincers. The proletarians fight
the cops over racially tinged police violence; the City Council votes to cut the
Austin Police Department budget, halt hiring new officers, and otherwise assert
itself to reverse the APD's gradual trend toward quasi-autonomy.
The aforementioned varies by detail in
other cities in recent weeks.
Also, speculations abound online as to the ulterior motives behind the factions'
actions, whether any given faction is acting of its own volition or being
manipulated by other factions or agents provocateurs, and whether the
interfactional status or predominance will further shift or stalemate.
The rest of us face the same fate as the
downtown small businesses wrecked and looted by rioters May 30-31.
So much for police protection. Then again, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the
police aren't required to protect you.
The Statesman has reported another spike in gun sales
̶ probably just a coincidence.
Moreover, while these power struggles
have unmasked to the inattentive the factions' true nature, they're urging the
rest of us to keep wearing masks, as part of a newly extended coronavirus
lockdown to mid-August.
That's practically coterminous with the start of the annual flu season.
Bear in mind none of the establishment
media reports about the resurgence of coronavirus provide details about which
subgroups are more at risk, and why exactly Travis County is experiencing a
resurgence when we've been under house arrest and socially distant since
mid-March.
According to a June 16 posting at Texas Scorecard, Travis County has 4,464
confirmed coronavirus cases, or three-tenths of 1 percent, among a total
population of 1.27 million people. Of those confirmed cases, 106 ended in death.
Arguendo, let's accept the recurring
establishment claims ̶ which change
almost daily ̶ that coronavirus
physically threatens more of us than the old and the immunocompromised, for whom
we should take precautions personally.
Regardless, even the Chronicle conceded that the protesters and rioters ignored
the antivirus measures, which would prove either a) the official response since
March was an tyrannical overreaction when coronavirus infections didn't rise, or
b) self-righteous, virtue-signaling proletarians, urged on by the likes of the
Chronicle, are hypocritically responsible for the continuing pandemic.
Unfortunately, the media hasn't yet confirmed the latter is the cause of the
resurgence, which nevertheless has provided the power elite an excuse to
continue isolating and impoverishing us. With a few pen strokes, the power elite
has made every little endeavor, interaction and transaction as
arduous as transiting in airports since
9/11.
Such efforts would be worse if not for
state government's intercession. Since May, the governor has banned Austin and
Travis County from enforcing social distancing measures, i.e., using police to
arrest people for ignoring their diktats.
Consequently, Austin mayor's whined and scolded citizens like a Midwestern
Scandinavian when he extended our house arrest June 15.
This is the same mayor who last year publicly whined about legislative proposals
to restrict municipalities’ ability to raise property taxes without an OK from
the property owners.
Steve Adler doesn't need a mask. He needs a muzzle.
City Hall further put the onus of
enforcement on businesses that've struggled to stay reopened.
That suggests the managerialists don't expect cooperation from the police
they've been attacking, but how exactly will the businesses enforce the
lockdown? Them and what police force? Unless the managerialists plan to use the
proletarians against dissenters. If so, that takes us into full-fledged
anarcho-tyranny, "a system that ignores such basic duties of government as
protecting citizens against crime and dotes instead on criminalizing the
innocent."
What happens as a reaction to that is anybody's guess. Furthermore, the
businesses risk additional loss from customers who stay away because they don't
want to endure the extra inconvenience. Many renowned establishments that helped
make Austin distinctive have already closed because of the lockdown.
The Chronicle almost gets this when it's
lamenting the continued lockdown of the music scene.
But its editorial staff equally cowers at the idea of reopening the restaurants,
clubs and bars to the status quo ante conditions that would allow them to
actually flourish ̶ a peculiar
contradiction, given their decades of extolling the vectors of sex, drugs
and rock 'n' roll.
The Chronicalistas, and the City
bureaucrats handing out emergency stimulus funds (that you paid for, and will
continue to, for at least the next 30 years) probably really do think a distinct
local culture is created by government direction and funding, rather than the
private efforts of disparate people.
Even if they suspect otherwise, they'd still rather continue their predecessors'
practice, since the New Deal, of cementing their power by disbursing federal
largesse.
Expect the creativity to flow into the applications.
Beyond cultural businesses, the lockdown
caused record unemployment in Travis County.
The local power elite keeps claiming the lockdown is for our health.
A German
parliamentary coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, what the local power
elite would ape if it could, issued a report in 2001 on unemployment's effects
on the individual: "Depressive moods, general dissatisfaction with life, fear,
helplessness and hopelessness, low self-esteem, resignation bordering on apathy,
a low level of activity, social isolation and loneliness represent the most
important symptoms." That "physical symptoms manifest themselves only after some
time" is not much consolation. "If unemployment means suffering, mass
unemployment means suffering on a massive scale."
Therefore, to improve
our health, the best thing the power elite can do is to end the lockdown and all
restrictions, so we can return to work. Any reader of Austin Dispatches, though,
knows the people who run this county lack such mental suppleness.
Instead, the City Council's quadrupling down, expressing open hostility to
motorists by lowering speed limits on major thoroughfares, closing off side
streets, and pushing a scheme to tear up downtown and hike property taxes for
disease-spreading mass transit.
Rather than "flattening the curve," they'll just flatten Austin.
It's dubious whether we or they can recover from such iatrogenic measures.
In other words, it's us or them. We need regime change.
On
the Metro
June 11: Whilst walking in Round Rock for exercise and exposure to sunlight
for Vitamin D3 generation, I witnessed an ice cream truck cruising through the
Sam Bass Trails subdivision
̶ something I thought only still existed as a
laggard pop culture trope.
Neighborhood News
A
water valve replacement required shutting off water to half the apartment
complex on June 4.
Repair work to the railroad crossing shut down Gracy Farms Lane to through
traffic from June 7-8.
KXAN-TV's traffic Web page recorded a collision at Rutland Drive and Burnet Road
on June 8.
NOTES