Tucker Carlson Op-ed: America is splitting into free states and those tightening lockdowns

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The country appears to be splitting into two hemispheres before our eyes: There are those places where public officials are allowing science to guide their decisions; states like that are cautiously beginning to relax their lockdowns and finding no spike in illness as they do it. Those are the free states.

And then there’s the other half of the country, the places where you’re glad you don’t live right now. In those places, power-drunk politicians crow about science but resolutely ignore its findings.

They don’t read studies. They don’t care what the data say.

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Their decisions are driven by ambition, political calculation and the pure animal joy of controlling other people’s lives.

Places like that are tightening their lockdowns even now.

Maybe no place in the country represents the authoritarian approach, the Chinese approach, more starkly than Los Angeles does.

L.A. County has more residents than New York City. But while New York has had close to 200,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, L.A. has had only about 35,000 in the whole county.

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Now, the real figure is certainly much higher than that, that’s what we find every time widespread testing takes place. But that’s the point: so few people in LA have died, relatively speaking, that we’re not certain how many are infected.

We know they’re not sick enough to crowd hospitals. The city’s health care system has never come close to collapsing.

In Los Angeles, the curve is now flat, and it has been flat for weeks. It could reopen tomorrow and it should and it would if its leaders were following the science.
But it’s not reopening.

Just the opposite is happening.

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Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti has now extended the lockdown through the end of July, which means at least two and a half more months of it.

He’s using law enforcement, liberally, to make certain that his citizens obey his orders.

Police say they’ve brought criminal charges against at least 60 “non-essential” businesses for the crime of going to work.

Countless other businesses have shut forever. They’re not coming back.
The citizens who remain stuck in Los Angeles are effectively hostages of the mayor.

Garcetti has demanded that anyone who goes outside, for any reason, as the heat rises in L.A.,  must wear a mask.

It goes without saying there no science to back up this order — or any of Garcetti’s so-called health decisions.

In fact, it’s possible that requiring masks outside will not prevent a single from being infected in Los Angeles.
But Garcetti doesn’t care. Anyone who disobeys this order will be punished.
It’s nuts.

But it’s just the beginning of Garcetti’s thoroughly bizarre restrictions. The more you know, the weirder it is.

Watch, for example as Garcetti explains that anyone who goes to the beach must make certain not to touch dry sand. Wet sand is fine. Dry sand is now illegal:

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI: Beaches will open up this week for exercise and active recreation only -- in the wet sand, I guess, is a good way of thinking about it, not hanging out and tanning in the dry sand.

What’s the science behind this? Once again, of course, there is none. None.
This isn’t reasoned thoughtful policymaking. It’s the expression of an autocrat who decided he must look tough by “doing something” to get elected president which has always been Eric Garcetti’s primary goal.

It’s scary if you think about what this means. It means that America’s second-largest city has fallen under the total control of a neurotic megalomaniac, who’s terrified of dry sand.

Eric Garcetti’s personal phobias are now law in Los Angeles.

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