Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the ProAmerica Report. And it’s going to be a great show. I’ve got an interesting segment that I’m going to do in a few moments about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. And I’m going to talk with you about it. And let me say right now, send me your thoughts on this, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about this segment I’m about to do in a few moments, because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and wondering about this.
We talk about the narrative machine – big tech, big media, and big government – shaping what we know, what we understand, what we think is true because they have such power. And I go into in this next segment a little bit more detail, I’m hoping to, I’m looking at my notes ,on how they’re really trying to addict us to certain things and it’s a real challenge. So you’ll see that. All right.
Today, what you need to know, I want to talk — I haven’t talked in a while about this. I want to talk about the Covid pandemic wind down. So why is it that you can go anywhere now? Churches, school, excuse me, restaurants, Capitol Hill… anywhere, and people will not be wearing masks. And yet airlines are required to continue to make you wear masks. And Airlines, by the way, have guaranteed better ventilation than most restaurants. They actually are required to have recirculation. They have much better ventilation.
Now, I guess you could say it’s a smaller space, square footage wise. If you’re in an airplane, you’ve got whatever square footage and that most restaurants will be bigger, I guess, but they actually have required ventilation systems that have filters, et cetera. But airline CEOs have written a letter to the administration saying, why are you still doing this to us? You’re making us wait till next month when everybody else is out from under and we’re dying here. And I’m sure they’re also dying because gas prices are high, which is going to make tickets higher.
But it’s true in New York last what is it, Tuesday of this past week, they announced that no masks for five and under children in schools, but above five need them. Finally, the Mayor allowed that you could not, the players could not worry about being vaccinated in New York. The players, even though you could be in the stadiums and not be vaccinated already before now. My point here is the CDC had an update on masks and they’ve got some sort of rules. Joe Biden is over at the NATO event. I saw the pictures of him and he’s standing around with no masks. Everybody else doesn’t have masks.
Why is this going on? And the only reason it’s going on, I think, is because it feels like they have to admit that it’s over and that a lot of it was a mistake. I don’t know what else it could be. There’s no excuse now for certain businesses, certain (like Airlines)… to be lagging behind on this. And it does lay bare at this point, the question so many people are thinking, which is who knew what and when? Who really knew what was true or not and who was just playing us for control and for their own instinct, as I mentioned in another segment, they know better.
I wonder if you went to one of these CDC or NIH and you got a bunch of the staffers and you put them under oath or you put them on a lie detector or something that you could really tell what they really thought. I’m not sure that many of them would say, we’re in this for control. We want to control people. I think what they would say is we are the ones that know better than you. They maybe not say this point blank. We know better than you, therefore, you should do what we say.
Now, as a father, as a parent, I have often learned that there is an instinct to say to your children that (always), that I know better and you have to do what I say. And if you do that too much, your kids will never grow up. That you have to be willing to let the kids make mistakes and have some free will and you can model and you can correct and even after the fact point out this would have been better to do. But an aspect of freedom and free will and being a functioning human being is having the ability to make mistakes and, of course, make some sometimes.
So at a certain point, when you see the conversation about the UN and international organizations and international groups of people that know, that assert something or the government bureaucrats… What you really have started to see dramatically in the last few years is this sense of we know better. We are the ones that know better than you. And I remember Ben Carson, Doctor Ben Carson, did a gesture when he’d speak. He said, they pat you on ahead and say, go away, little boy, you know, and he was talking about himself when he was younger, I think, but he had this gesture with his hand. They pat you on the head and say, that’s nice, that’s nice you have another thought, go over there. And they dismiss you.
That’s what we’ve seen writ large. And it’s kind of good, not kind of… It’s good that it’s been exposed to us. That we see that they’ve been telling us what to do because they know better. And again, if you want to be generous, you say, well, they really think they know better. They really think that they’re the experts, they know the science. They really believe that and they’re not nasty people. It still feels nasty, by the way. It still feels unpleasant. It still feels bullying. But if you want to be generous. You say, well, I can’t read their minds. I think they really are trying to do something, but think about what the instinct is to try to help people because you know better.
And then think about what happens when government has given power to people to assert that because you remember in various settings, maybe when you’re a young professional, maybe when you were in school, you’d have around you people who would say this is the best way to do this, but they wouldn’t have the authority to make you do it that way.
The one example I have is I was telling my kids that there was a period where I was playing sports, basketball in high school, and I had a friend of mine who was really about the same level of player, but he decided he was going to get in shape and he became a fitness guru. Like he just became a fitness guy. He could run a million miles. He was never much faster than me. He was never taller. He really couldn’t jump higher, but he was fit as could be. And it showed in little ways.
And more importantly, it showed he cared and he was committed and his mindset was sort of all in and I never did that and I remember the time period. And I remember thinking years later there was no way he could make me do it. He would say, come work out with me, whatever. And I was like, no, I’m not doing that, I’m doing this or this and this. And the point is someone can’t make you change your behavior. They can’t make you become healthier, work out.
But now we’re in a time where a whole bunch of bureaucrats for a whole bunch of reasons, including the pandemic emergency, but also just in general, the growth in the size and scope and power of government, have the ability to take their instinct that I know better than you and then put it to action. That’s the difference. It’s one thing to have that instinct “I know better than you.” May be true some of the time. It’s another thing to have the power to impose that on other people.
And one of the problems, besides the fact that lots of it was unfair and unkind, one of the problems of the last few years is that people picked up the habit of transitioning from I know what’s better for you to making you do what they say is better for you because they can, because they have the power and realizing they have the power to do that. It’s a little bit like I did a video earlier in the week. If you go to my social media, you’ll see it.
I was doing a video on how I’d come home at lunch because we’re doing some work in our basement. It’s an unfinished basement and one side of it, we’re putting in some finish, you know drywall and all, and it has to be inspected by the county. So the County Inspector came out. And what starts as a why not? Why not have codes that make sure that people don’t build dangerous homes? Fair enough.
Somewhere between codes that make sure people don’t build dangerous homes or dangerous buildings or dangerous whatever and a guy walking into my house and saying the insulation needs to look like this and not that and me saying, wait, it’s the installation that’s supposed to save me on heat costs and energy costs because of insulation, not because you have a preference. But he had the power to make me do it. And I did, I had to just to get it passed, inspection.
Anyway, it’s a silly little example but that example writ large… And meanwhile we’re watching the CDC update their mask mandates and controlling people when it’s clearly not necessary, it’s clearly past the point of effectiveness and they’re still doing it. And you say to yourself, why? Do they know better? Or do they know better and have the ability to make it happen and both of those are in play. And I think it’s the latter, I think it’s the latter one.
So anyway, it’s a little bit off topic in terms of, I got a little off topic from what I started out saying which is if you’re the airlines or any other business that is now being told you have to do x or y in terms of the mandates, you got to be shaking your head and saying you’re just targeting us for no reason. That makes sense.
And meanwhile, more and more of us just don’t trust the government therefore, because of it. So all right, let’s take a break and we’ll come back. We’ve got a couple of great guests. Excuse me, one great guest. My segment coming up on it’s called Choose Your Addiction. Choose Your Addiction. And we’ll hear from Adam Andrzejewski of OpenTheBooks.com also. We’ll be right back.
Please visit promericareport.com, proamericareport.com. Sign up there for the daily email. Back in a moment, Ed Martin. Pro America Report.
