Tucker: Power-hungry leaders use pandemic as pretext for more control
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host accuses America's hypocritical lawmakers of not following own coronavirus rules
America is locking down again. In some places, that's already happening. If you have kids, you've seen it. Joe Biden has promised more of it -- more masks, more quarantines, more limits on travel, more restrictions on who you can eat with and who you can touch.
The most intimate details of our lives are being completely controlled by our leadership class. The people who used to scream at politicians, "Keep your hands off my body!" aren't saying a thing about this. In fact, they're encouraging it.
So the question is, what exactly is this about? It's not about science. If masks and lockdowns prevented spikes in coronavirus infections, we wouldn't be seeing spikes in coronavirus infections after nine months. But we are seeing them, so clearly, the geniuses got it wrong once again. This time, they're not even bothering to point to legitimate scientific studies to support continuing their policies because there aren't any studies that support that. So what is going on?
Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has some idea. Viganò is one of the truth-tellers in his church. He made himself deeply unpopular with many in the hierarchy several years ago by exposing their complicity in decades of sex abuse. Viganò is 79 years old and in the way that older people stop caring what others think, he really doesn't care. So instead, he says what he thinks is true.
A few weeks ago, he wrote a letter to President Donald Trump assessing the lockdowns from a perspective you almost never hear in this country.
"No one, up until last February," Viganò wrote, "would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their businesses open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world ... The fundamental rights of citizens and believers are being denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman, faceless tyranny."
There's a reason you may not have heard those words before. The usual foot soldiers for conformity in our news media did their best to suppress and discredit Viganò's letter to the president. Yahoo News tried to tie the elderly clergyman somehow to QAnon, which to them made sense. He alleged that a global health emergency was being used by the people in power for ends that had nothing to do with the virus itself, and of course, that's crazy talk. That's the media position on that.
The only problem is that what Viganò wrote is actually true. It's not a conspiracy theory, it is factually accurate. Here's Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaking to the United Nations in September.
INGRAHAM: BIDEN'S COVID SHUTDOWN, GLOBALIST 'RESET' PLANS WILL CRIPPLE AMERICAN FREEDOMS, ECONOMY
TRUDEAU: This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.
"This is our chance," says Justin Trudeau. Not our chance to save you from a virus with a 99% survival rate. This is our chance to impose unprecedented social controls on the population in order to bypass democracy and change everything to conform with their weird academic theories that have never been tested in the real world and, by the way, don't actually make sense.
"This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset." Keep in mind, that's not from QAnon, that is a head of state talking and he's not alone. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, has written a book called "COVID-19: The Great Reset." The book isn't really about science or medicine. Instead, it describes, "what changes will be needed to create a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable world going forward."
What changes is Schwab talking about? We don't know. What we're certain of is that you're going to pay for them and the people in charge will benefit from them.
SACRAMENTO BEE BLASTS NEWSOM FOR 'HYPOCRITICAL FIASCO' OF ATTENDING PARTY DURING COVID
What's telling is how different this is from the way our leaders were talking back when the pandemic began. Statewide coronavirus lockdowns in this country started about eight months ago, in mid-March. At the time, California Gov. Gavin Newsom predicted that 56 % of his state's population -- more than 25 million people -- would become infected with the virus within eight weeks. Businesses would need to shut down, Newsom acknowledged. But he also promised he would all be over soon. "This is not a permanent state," Newsom assured us. "It is a moment in time."
That should have made us nervous. Because in the end, that moment continued indefinitely. Pretty soon Gavin Newsom was telling us who we were allowed to be around and who we were allowed to talk to.
NEWSOM, IN JULY: As always, I want to remind you, limit your mixing with people outside of your household. It's just common sense. But the data suggests not everybody is practicing common sense.
What have we learned from the data since then? Well, as of Nov. 15, about 2.6% of the total population of California has been infected. That's roughly 20 million fewer people than Gavin Newsom predicted to be infected by May. So in some ways, that looks like a victory. Can we declare victory? No, just the opposite.
Monday, Newsom announced that more lockdowns are underway. Right now, 41 counties in our biggest state are under the most restrictive form of lockdown. Churches, gyms, and restaurants cannot conduct any kind of indoor operations.
CHICAGO MAYOR DEFENDS APPEARING AT LARGE BIDEN CELEBRATION DAYS BEFORE ISSUING THANKSGIVING LOCKDOWN
Newsom is implementing these lockdowns on scientifc grounds, of course, but he doesn't believe in it for himself because apparently he is exempt from the laws of epidemiology. We know this because nine days ago, the governor was caught violating his own guidelines by eating at one of the state's most expensive restaurants with a dozen other people. By the way, he's fine. He didn't die from it. When you're God, you don't fear viruses. Lockdowns are for mortals.
You'd think getting caught would hurt Newsom. Getting caught ignoring your own rules used to be a major problem for politicians, but it's not anymore. They are no longer humiliated by their own hypocrisy. The point of the exercise is to humiliate the rest of us by forcing us to obey transparently absurd orders.
"Everyone has to wear a Viking hat with horns every Wednesday. It's the law! Dr. Fauci's orders!"
By the way, people would do that. They would follow the orders and would scream at others if they didn't. In an environment like this, dominated by completely unreasonable demands from the people on top, mediocrities like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot thrive. This is a moment created for her and people like her. Lightfoot explained on MSNBC Friday that she has no personal obligation to follow the lockdown restrictions that you could be arrested for ignoring.
DC MAYOR DISREGARDED OWN TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS TO ATTEND BIDEN VICTORY SPEECH
STEPHANIE RUHLE: What do you say to those who are criticizing you, where less than a week ago, you went out and stood before a massive crowd who was celebrating Joe Biden's victory, and now you're saying your city has to shut down? How do you have one and not the other?
LIGHTFOOT: There are times when we actually do need to have the relief and come together. And I felt like that was one of those times. That crowd was gathered, whether I was there or not.
Notice the complete lack of embarrassment and shame. "There are times when the rules just don't apply to me."
So when specifically are those times when the rules don't apply to the people making the rules? Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser decided that her rules did not apply to Joe Biden's victory party in Delaware, so she went. Going to the party, she explained, was, "essential." Muriel Bowser didn't have to quarantine or restrict her travel in any way because it was on behalf of the Democratic Party.
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What does the Great Reset look like? This is what it looks like: The people in charge doing whatever they want because they're in charge. There will be no live music in the Great Reset. Choirs will be illegal unless they are singing the praises of Kamala Harris. Christmas will be banned. "Sorry, put on your mask and spend the holidays alone. Good luck."
So how long can this all continue, this weird and yet weirdly recognizable combination of hypocrisy and authoritarianism? Well, it's hard to imagine it could go on forever. In his letter last month to the president, Archbishop Viganò wrote this and it's worth hearing:
"This Great Reset is designed to fail because those who planned it do not understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights, to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and their grandchildren."
Let's hope that's true.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening monologue on the Nov. 16, 2020 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."