Questioning the overreaction to the virus Dempanic

I haven't written much this week [Did you write at all? Ed.] because I've been waiting for the furore about the "Corona Crisis", aka the Dempanic, to die down. [You couldn't think of another verb phrase? Ed.] Only today have I started to hear a few small voices cautiously whispering that the pandemic (as the WHO calls it) isn't that bad, after all, and maybe it's time that our authoritarian governments start to take their feet off our necks.

I don't mean to downplay the seriousness of the problem, but I don't think it's the huge crisis that the liberal political and media elites want us to believe it is. Their real agenda is to increase the almighty state's control over every single thing that we do, not excluding the things we say and the things we think.

We the sheeple have been led into a huge trap, giving up our natural and constitutional freedoms to the ever-expanding, overweening nanny state. If those who lead us knew what they were doing, rather than making it up as they go along, it wouldn't be so bad. But they don't!

Not that this is anything knew. Here are a few wise words from The Peter Principle, by Dr Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull. For those who haven't read the book (published in 1969), the authors posit that things always go wrong, not because of Murphy's Law, but because, in a hierarchy, everyone tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

In the chapter headed Hierarchiology & Politics, Dr Peter quotes a student who said to him "I don't know whether the world is run by smart men who are...putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." The good doctor says, in response, that his studies have shown that "capitalistic, socialistic, and communistic systems are characterized by the same accumulation of redundant and incompetent personnel."

Those who (allegedly) lead us say that they're merely following the advice of experts. The problem, as Dr Peter sees it, is that "in any economic or political crisis...many learned experts will prescribe many different remedies!" Why? Because
1) Many of the experts have actually reached their level of incompetence: their advice is nonsensical or irrelevant.
2) Some of them have sound teories, but are unable to put them into effect.
3) In any event, neither sound nor unsound proposals can be carried out efficiently, because the machinery of government is a vast series of interlocking hierarchies, riddled through and through with incompetence.

Agent 78 would agree. She is still waiting for some "emergency relief" promised weeks ago, to which she is clearly entitled. She has called two departments which might be tasked with doling out the elusive spondulix -- it's not clear which one actually has the responsibility -- but has been unable to get through on the phone. Indeed, she can't even get put on hold. Instead of saying "Hello", the computer at the other end just says "Try again tomorrow," or, believe it or not, "Try again next week."

The "cure" -- throwing money at the "crisis" -- is proving worse than the disease. No matter what they call their strategy, our governments are, in effect, printing money sufficient to ensure that everyone -- citizen or not, suffering or not -- will get some (eventually), and, at the next election, show their gratitude for being given their own money. The mind boggles.

The portrait of Dorian Trump

Assiduous readers may have noticed Walt's pro-Trump bias. I was hoping for a Trump victory. I bet on it. I didn't look too closely at the man himself, supporting his candidacy chiefly for what he said he would do about the problems that bedevil America today: stalled economy, immigration, weak foreign policy, crime...and the list goes on. I was truly hopeful that he would MAGA.

Now Donald Trump is POTUS. He started his presidency -- notice I didn't say "reign" -- with a flurry of executive orders which, if issued by a king, would have been called "edicts". I'm reminded of the scene in Catch 22 where General Dreedle (played so well by Orson Welles) tells Colonel Cathcart to have another officer taken out and shot, only to be told by his son-in-law that he can't do that, to which Dreedle replies anrgily, "Why not?"

So it seems to be with President Trump's first four months in office. Mr Trump is right when he says that he has been maligned, insulted, denigrated etc in the lamestream meeja as has no other president in history. But he has only himself to blame. He is thrashing around like the proverbial bull in the china shop, issuing an order here, firing someone there, emitting Tweets by the score without making sure his brain is engaged, then back-pedaling, changing his mind, and reverting to Original Plan 2C.

It is all quite disappointing, kind of like looking at the picture of Dorian Gray. In the case of Dorian Gray, the beautiful painting of a handsome man fell away to reveal an ugly old man -- physically and morally -- underneath. I won't be that harsh on Mr Trump. Unlike the loony-leftish "ladies" of The View, I don't think POTUS is an evil genius. What we are learning, to our horror, as we watch the real Donald Trump in action, is that there is almost no substance beneath the brash, charismatic (?) exterior. Peel away the veneer and you see... nothing.

President Trump is in over his head, elevated, in accordance with the Peter Principle, to a position which is clearly beyond his competence. The question now is whether the USA can survive President Trump's period of on-the-job training. Walt (and his stockbroker) hope so.