Diaper Report: 04/16/2024 - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk (2024)

No, it’s not over. At least, not within the boundaries of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, CA.

A reader and his son who went there recently to attend an event for newly admitted students encountered a sign very reminiscent of the ones we used to see at airports when “terrorism” was the bogeyman du jour.

You may recall.

These were color-coded barometers indicating the supposed “threat” – from “low” to “severe,” with several gradations in between. Well, those apparently got old in that they lost their power to terrorize the population. So time for a new barometer – and new bogeyman.

This being the one you can’t see and so could be anywhere.

Better be scared.

The new barometer is titled Indoor Masking Status, in big bolded letters. Below this is the subheadline: Masking Phase TODAY (in ALL CAPS to indicate it could change TOMORROW). Below that – for now – a Homeland Security-like green bar that reads LOW (also ALL CAPS). There are also red and yellow bands for increased levels of terrorism regarding the invisible threat that threatens everyone, everywhere.

This is what they’re teaching people to get used to at a California law school. A place where lawyers are minted. Something worth thinking about.

The reader who hipped me to the goings-on asked a professor and some school officials about the “mask” advisory.

“I told them the sign reminds me of the Homeland Security color codes which are meant to keep the fear level constant and that it was psychological conditioning.” Their reply is a barometer of just how deep the rot has penetrated.

The following conversation ensued:

They said: We take Covid very seriously. I told them so all the other universities, businesses and stores that have no such signs or notices of masking are all wrong and putting their employees and customers at risk? They had nothing. Then they said: We have a good relationship with the county on these matters. I said: you mean with Barbara Ferrer, who was wrong about everything, like my county’s health director, Sara Cody? Awkward silence. Then the law student jumps in: When you go to a national park they have color signs for the fire threat level. I said: Yeah, fire is real, Covid isn’t. Then I really let them have it and they couldn’t respond.

And there you have it.

Ostensibly intelligent people (who probably are, in the IQ sense; they are, after all, lawyers and law school professors) who cannot reason, which is a fascinating and alarming incongruity. People often make the mistake of assuming that it is only stupid people (in the low IQ sense) who cannot reason. Far from it. Intelligent people are often incapable of it, which is worse because they are intelligent in a way. They are smart enough to remember and regurgitate a great deal of information by rote. But they lack the intelligence to extrapolate and discern, to grasp and apply principles to particulars. Theirs is the intelligence of the parrot. But it is more dangerous because these parrots are lawyers conditioning the next generation of their brood to squawk as they squawk.

Similarly in medicine, where larval doctors are taught not to think but not to question. Do as you’re told and tell your patients the same.

It is probably not an exaggeration to state that much of the intellectual class of this country has become a kind of parrot chorus that squawks in accordance with whatever the narrative is they’re told to squawk in tune with.

My correspondent concludes:

These people are not well. There is nothing you can say to change their minds. I am actually not sure how much they really believe that masking works or doing it for political reasons, who knows. Also, during the event, the law school had a panel of recent alum, consisting of three males and one female. I kid you not, all three of the males were gay. Two openly, the third was obvious. One shared his pronouns with us.

Of course.

Part of the parrot-squawking has been the normalization of the abnormal. No, that’s not quite right. It is more – and worse – than that. Normality – that is to say, sanity – has been transformed not only into something “abnormal” but into something morally objectionable. You are a bad person if you do not parrot-squawk in tune and not just with regard to “masking” but with everything these very sick people croon their approbation of.

If it is good to “mask” then it is right to be annoyed by people who don’t. Because they are in the wrong. Viewed from this bizarro point-of-view, it is righteous to denounce the people who question “masking.”