Victims and Victims

Whatever one thinks about the appropriateness of the lock downs over  the epidemic, it is indisputable that they produced real victims – people whose businesses or livelihoods  were damaged or ruined,  dying people in nursing homes who spent their last days alone because they were locked away from their family and friends, sick people left to suffer because the surgery they needed was banned as elective, children  who coped  poorly with the disruption of their lives’ routines, and many others.

There are also phony victims – officials responsible for shutdowns with sad tales of being triggered by “hateful” criticism from unruly subjects rude enough not to like being pushed around.  As one example a transsexual official in Pennsylvania has made national news and gained sympathetic attention in the traditional media by whining that some people who don’t like the way the lock down has gone in that state have been mean by failing to respect that fact that he prefers to be seen as a woman, even going so far as to ridicule his pretense and call him “sir”.  That may have been bad manners.  It may have been rude, counterproductive, and beside the point of opposing  the lock down.  But that is all it was.  It did not make him a victim, any more than being called a fat lunatic makes Trump a victim.

I will save my sympathy for the real victims, and let the thin skinned politicians and bureaucrats suffer as they may.  It is healthy for the country for people to treat politicians and bureaucrats  as a class as objects of ridicule.  Besides Truman was right about heat and kitchens.