« Amy Acton guesses wrong, and Ohioans pay the price | How depraved is the 'resistance'? Enough to root for vast death by COVID-19 »
April 8, 2020

For Democrats, rules are for the little people

By Andrea Widburg

Across America, people are being told "stay in your homes" (even if it bankrupts you), "keep social distance" (even if you're married to each other), and "wear masks" (to help save your fellow citizens).  Democrats are the most hysterical about these rules because, after all, they have to make this whole epidemic appear in the worst light possible to tar Trump with it.  What's unpleasant is that the same Democrat party that is insisting that everyone will die — and that chloroquine won't work — doesn't think that the rules apply to its leading members.

Yesterday, Americans learned that, lockdown or not, Mayor Bill de Blasio still needs to make the 12-mile drive from Gracie Mansion to Brooklyn's Prospect Park so he can exercise.  Unlike other people, he's special:

"I go get my exercise like everyone else," the mayor said on NY1's "Inside City Hall."

"I go to my home neighborhood. It's part of what helps me just continue to work nonstop," he said. "I'm on conference calls pretty much the whole time."

Hizzoner was responding to a question from a viewer about why he's driven to Brooklyn for a walk in the park when his Upper East Side home abuts acres of waterfront parkland.

[snip]

De Blasio, in trying to rationalize his long-distance strolls, said, "My situation is particular and I am here serving people ... and I'm just doing something I think will help me to be the most effective."

De Blasio's not the only "special" Democrat politician.  Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has been adamant that her city's citizens lock themselves away from the world:

"Stay at home. Only go out for essentials. You have to readjust your thinking. Be smart," Lightfoot said. "Not only will our police be deployed to shut them down if you are not abiding by these orders we will be forced to shut down the parks and lakefront. The situation Is deadly serious and we need you take it deadly seriously."

[snip]

"You cannot go on long bike rides. Playgrounds are shut down. You must abide by the order. Outside, is for a brief respite, not for 5Ks. I can't emphasize enough that we abide the rules."

For Lightfoot, though, all rules she strongly espouses are for the little people.  If you're the mayor, you can get your hair styled, a decidedly non-essential job.  It turns out that the mayor, in her own words, is "a person who [takes] personal hygiene very seriously and I felt like I needed to have a haircut.  So I got a haircut."

All those people who are making the best of things with grown-out hair, gray roots, home haircuts don't matter.  Whether they take personal hygiene very seriously or not doesn't matter.  But Democrat Mayor Lightfoot, she matters.

We see the same behavior with Democrats in the media.  During the second half of March, as media figures were accelerating the panic about COVID-19 to increase the blame they could hurl at Trump, they were sitting in packed White House press briefings.  It was Trump who reminded them about social distancing.  Even now, if you look at any White House press briefing, none of the reporters is wearing a mask.

There are also whole galleries dedicated to Democrat politicians who don't even make a pretense of wearing masks correctly.

None of these behaviors is anomalous.  One of the constants among leftists is that their rules apply only to the little people.  Perhaps the only communist leader who appeared to abide by the stringent demands of socialism was Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam — and that was during wartime, when the people had no wealth for the communists to steal.

Outside wartime conditions, there are constants in communist countries (whether Poland, Cuba, Venezuela, the former Soviet Union, or Communist China).  The nomenklatura — the party insiders — dine on caviar while the little people stand in line for hours to get a Kielbasa, a little bit of arroz sin pollo, watery borscht sans sour cream, or sweet and sour gristle in place of pork.

With climate change, the people who stoked the panic never changed their high-end lifestyles of large homes and jet planes.  They're now doing the same with COVID-19 that they did with climate change: the rules apply only to you, not to them.  This time, though, their disdain for the rules may come back and bite them in their collective butts, given that individual behavior directly affects COVID-19's reach.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com