Unintended Consequences

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Yesterday my wife and I drove to Albuquerque because we needed to escape the smoke drifting over from the forest fire in the Sangre de Cristos. In New Mexico, occasionally traveling 180 miles for a cup of coffee is not that outrageous. However, to get from Los Alamos to Albuquerque, we have the option of going through Santa Fe or taking the bypass, which was built to allow low-level nuclear waste from Los Alamos to detour around Santa Fe on its way to Carlsbad for long-term underground storage. While traversing the bypass, I found myself thinking about the irony of unintended consequences. Liberal residents of Santa Fe demanded years ago that Los Alamos not be allowed to transport low-level nuclear waste on the highway that runs through their town, so the bypass was built. Now instead of going to Santa Fe to spend my money, I can conveniently skirt around them.

The irony is that Santa Fe businesses derive 25% of their revenue from affluent Los Alamos technologist. In a situation similar to the riots in Portland, Seattle, and Chicago, building a bypass around Santa Fe is another example of how businesses in Democratic controlled cities get screwed over in the push to enact irrational agendas. But that’s an aside for another day, even though it is an interesting observation.

So, my wife and I are tooling along the Santa Fe bypass on our way to Albuquerque to support that local economy when I find myself behind a Prius boldly sporting a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. As part of a new game we play when driving, I wager my wife that when we pass the Prius the driver will be wearing a facemask.

After winning the wager and lamenting the tragedy of someone being so convincingly manipulated by facemask hysteria, my wife and I discussed the psychology of what has to be going on in a person’s mind to worry so much about COVID that they’d wear a facemask while driving alone in their car. Who are they protecting themselves from? Do they actually believe the virus is so pervasive it’s ubiquitous throughout the atmosphere and no place is safe?

Do people wearing facemasks when they drive alone in their car also wear facemasks while home alone? If not then they are as irrational as they are easily manipulated because if the virus is so pervasive it can infiltrate your car, it surely seeps into your house. In fact, it can be argued that your car is more air tight than your house so logic mandates if you wear a facemask while driving alone in your car, you must wear a facemask while alone in your home, even while sleeping.

That being said, it occurs to me that this Prius driving, Sanders supporting, facemask wearing, liberal is exactly why Democrats are so suddenly concerned about how people will vote in November’s election and why they’re panickily pushing for mail-in voting rather than traditional in-person voting. The Democrat oligarchy has come to realize that they’ve been so successful creating COVID hysteria there base may be too afraid to come out to vote.

Ponder this, in the same manner you automatically assume anyone wearing a facemask while driving alone in their car is Bernie/Biden supporter, when you see someone working outside in their yard without a facemask, you probably assume they’re Republican. This is a generalization of course, but to be fair, is it not pretty much on the mark?

If you’re a conservative, your assumption is probably based on the fact that the person busy outside in their yard without a mask is working rather than rioting, and because they have not bought into the Democratic demagoguery regarding the necessity to wear facemasks offering no COVID protection. Conversely, if you’re a liberal, you probably assume this menacing Republican maintaining his yard is a grave threat to his community and is clearly a facist for the way they disregard clear and convincing facemask mandates.

Therein lies the terrifying unintended consequence the Democratic oligarchy finds itself confronted with. Ask yourself this salient question: who is more likely to risk becoming a COVID casualty by standing in line to vote? Forget that these very same people who are too afraid to vote in person stand in line daily at the grocery store. But, based on your observations of family, friends, and neighbors who have bought into the facemask hysteria, do you not sense that those aligned as Republicans have no compunction about coming out to vote and those who align as Democrats are overwhelmed with worry?

You can of course argue that your Republican friends are more patriotic and falsely believe the COVID crisis has been fabricated. And of course you can just as cynically say that Democrats are too busy rioting and destroying the country to take time off to help rebuild it. But I’m not talking about who’s likely to vote or not vote base on ideological passions, I’m asking who’s more likely to physically show up based on their understanding of COVID risks? Who’s been more mentally conditioned by their political oligarchy and complicit media (on both sides) to take that risk?

Stone Gossard once said, “Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.”

The Democrats created the fallacious facemask hysteria to whip up their base and cause enough chaos to destroy President Trump. Now it seems their nefarious plot may actually ensure President Trump is re-elected as Republicans turn out in-mass to vote this November, while Democrats cower at home, or in their facemask protected car, afraid to leave their COVID free sanctuary to risk the menacing virus-saturated air outside.

This could go down as political history’s ultimate unintended consequence, if not it’s most ironic. Which is why you can expect the push for mail-in voting to reach a frenzied pitch as the election approaches. There’s no strategy for the Democrats to convince their base it’s safe to vote, they’ve invested too much in convincing them the world is ending; not in twelve years, which was how long they gave us back in January, but much more emanate.